The Omaha World-Herald has reported some great news from Iowa where the national Poetry Out Loud competition at the Iowa School for the Deaf was won with a performance of Jabberwocky. First-time contestant Gabby Humlicek wowed the judges with her choice. ”It was a really challenging poem to turn into American Sign Language,” Humlicek said. In rendering Carroll’s nonsense words Humlicek said it helped that “I’m a gregarious signer, and I practiced.” The newspaper reports that Gabby will go on to the state competition in De Moines this March – success there could lead to Washington D.C. and a bid for the national title. We wish her luck!
I couldn’t find an online video of Gabby’s performance, but for the curious I did manage to find another anonymous performance on YouTube. It’s fascinating to try and follow along with the poem. I am not sure what is happening 40 seconds in but I think it might be the frumious bandersnatch and, if so, it is pretty scary. It would be great if any readers of this blog who know ASL could offer us a commentary.
Secret supper clubs are all the rage, so we’ve heard (we’ve never found one). Right now, somewhere in Vancouver, the Swallow Tail Supper Club is entertaining diners with fine food, cocktails, and live entertainment on a Wonderland theme. Local blogger Ariane Colenbrander seems to be in on the secret:
The evening starts at the outskirts of a moonlit forest, where guests are greeted by a frantic White Rabbit, who ushers them down the rabbit hole, to a nostalgic world of childhood fairytale characters. The Mad Hatter pours tea and soup is served in a “Drink Me” bottle labeled either “Big” or “Small”. The bottle guests drink from will determine their next course. More...
According to the same blog, celebrity chef and Food Network star Bob Blumer may also be involved, though it is not clear how. The supper club will be operating for only a few more days—they don’t seem to be sold out yet. Tickets cost $129 a head.
You know how it is. You read an email alert which leads to a blog, which leads to a YouTube clip, which leads to you spending 6:31 minutes watching a 1987 spoof of Madonna’s “Material Girl” starring Alice and six men in Tweedle suits, shot entirely on location and out of hours in Disney World, Florida.
It’s brilliantly awful, but if for any reason you can’t quite watch it all, at least skip to the end to read the extensive credits. Prominent thanks are given to the Walt Disney World Character Wardrobe, on the principal that sometimes it is easier to ask forgiveness than permission, I assume.
Alice and Steampunk both seem good ingredients to make a perfect Halloween haunted house. If you’re in New York City this week, there’s a spooky new Steampunk Haunted House at Abron’s Art Center on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, created by Third Rail Projects.
Following up on last year’s “Waking Nightmare,” this year, the critically acclaimed Third Rail Projects behind Steampunk borrows from author Lewis Carroll’s dark side for a show called “Through the Looking Glass.” But make no mistake; it’s not for children, and no one under 8 is admitted. The disclaimer warns that it’s “a frightening, immersive experience that winds through the theater and catacombs of the Abrons Playhouse … There will be fog effects, intense flashes of light, loud noises, lots of dust, soot, dripping pipes, churning gears, rusty metal, and other things that will hurt you if you touch them.”
The show starts on Saturday; tickets, which are available online, are $10 for students and $20 to $25 for adults, depending on the day of the week. There’s also a special Halloween party fundraiser for Third Rail on Oct. 26 that includes a cocktail reception and behind-the-scenes look at the project; those tickets are $50.
How often do you hear the phrase “inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Sylvie and Bruno“? If your answer is “not enough,” check out the reviews for Outland, a new play currently being performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland.
UK national newspaper the Guardian described it as “a flight of fancy into parallel universes exploring the nature of creativity… spurred by the suggestion that the creator of Alice in Wonderland suffered from a form of epilepsy that made him see the world differently from the rest of us.”
What can audiences expect from Outland?
They can expect a lot of typical Carroll nonsense and characters; there’s a fair bit of Wonderland and his obsession with puzzling logic. However, you’ll also meet some new characters, if you’re not familiar with his more obscure work, and perhaps another much more profound, sentimental, philosophical side to him. The play has its surreal, absurd moments that you’d inevitably expect but it’s also touching, sweet and introvert.
Outland is running from August 3-29 at the C Soco venue in Edinburgh.
Nancy Willard sends Clare Imholtz this piece of snail-mail correspondence as a ‘guest blog,’ a report of a local production of Alice in Wonderland witnessed in Provincetown, Mass.
August 6, 2011
I am writing from Cape Cod. Lewis Carroll is thriving here. Two productions of Alice are listed in the local newspaper, and yesterday I attended one of them, in Provincetown. When I told the director that I would be writing to the Lewis Carroll Society about it, he was ecstatic. Needless to say, the production was an adaptation, a wonderfully zany and lively affair, and I think the ingenuity the actors showed in staging “The Pool of Tears” and “The Garden of Live Flowers” in a small space would have amused Carroll. The director told me that the aim of their theater was to put on plays that would be greatly enjoyed by both adults and children.
The play, Alice in Wonderland (A Musical Curiosity), was performed by the Pee Wee Players of Provincetown. It was adapted by Matthew Lazure with additional songs by Ryan Landry, and directed by Marc Guerrette. The players were Matthew Lazure, Marc Guerrette, Megan Ludlow, Billy Hough, and James P. Byrne.
It runs weekend evenings at 5:30pm through September 4th, in the Vixen at the Pilgrim House, Provincetown, Mass. Thank you, Nancy!
Monday morning off to a dull start? Transform it with this Vocaloid musical created by the Japanese artist known as Oster Project.
The part of Alice (and possibly all the other parts as well – I’m shaky on the technology here) was “sung” by Hatsune Miku, a singing synthesizer application which was created using vocal samples from Japanese actress Saki Fujita. Hatsume Miku, one of many singing personas created using the Vocaloid software, has become a virtual idol: her album topped a Japanese weekly album chart and she even performed “live” in Tokyo in last year.
This Lewis Carroll-inspired theater installation seems interesting for its interactive aspects and impressive scope. It’s happening in different parks around Seattle during weekends in July and August: today at 4pm in Lake Meridian Park, Kent, WA; July 30th & 31st at 4pm, Bellevue Botanical Gardens, Bellevue, WA; and August 6th at 11:30 & 2:30, Les Gove Park, Auburn, WA. WONDERLAND: Alice Adventures is part of 4Culture’s Site Specific Performance Network. Here’s the blurb from Theater Simple:
A free theatrical park escapade, WONDERLAND is inspired by and adapted from Charles Dodgson’s (Lewis Carroll) Alice stories, as well as Dodgson’s wordplay, math games and puzzles.
An all-ages adventures, theater and visual arts weave whimsically together within a parkland, playing with the creative perspectives of imaginations.
THE GOAL: To look at ideas of PERSPECTIVE, CREATIVITY and PLAY – and have some serious fun.
Who can play? EVERYONE.
FOLLOW White Rabbits!
SEE the Gryphon and the Mock Turtle on the Locks! Dance the Lobster Quadrille!
HEAR the Tweedle twins recite the Walrus and The Carpenter
PLAY GIANT tic tac toe with the White Queen or croquet with the King and Queen of Hearts!
EXPLORE a tiny house and a giant flower garden!
FIND all the riddles and puns stashed around the park!
DRAW what you see, and see what you draw!
And of course, listen to the timeless words of the story, and puzzle your way through the event on your own.
And here’s a nice slideshow of images from the 2010 debut of the project in Seattle’s Botanical Gardens:
The set’s all recycled, reclaimed,
Singing and acrobatics abound.
The Junk Orchestra provides music,
Using scrap to make ingenius sound.
The Ship of Fools is rubbish too,
Volunteers and Lotos Collective made it from trash.
It navigates around the audience,
Beware: you and the crew might clash.
Because this is interactive theatre!
Accept bananas, make thunder, stay on your feet;
This isn’t for you, if you prefer to do
Theatre with an interval, three acts and red velvet seat.
The play actually seems very intriguing, maybe it just wasn’t that reviewer’s clean cup of tea. The Trial of the Mariner is “an interactive, multimedia performance looking at the future of our oceans” inspired by both The Hunting of the Snark and S.T. Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” “The year is 2111, and a group of desperate sailors embark on a voyage on the Ship of Fools. Lost at sea and mad with cabin fever, they arrive at the Plastic Continent of the Pacific Ocean Gyre, where the unhinged Mariner’s adventures come to life.” There’s still three more performances, closing on the 21st.
Art by John Turner of Creative Goods Design & Supply, for Wonderland, in a New York Times special feature "Adventures in Communicating a New Alice"
The reviews have been coming in all weekend for Frank Wildhorn’s Wonderland: A New Broadway Musical (the musical formerly known as Wonderland: A New Musical and Wonderland: A New Musical Adventure.) Wonderland‘s website quotes the New York Times: “INSPIRATIONAL, FANCIFUL & GROOVY.” The Times’ review by Charles Isherwood was actually a bit more nuanced, but I suppose “…the desire to create a traditional narrative arc from the unruly dreamscape of Carroll’s original results in a convoluted story line pitting the good guys against the bad…” doesn’t fit on a marquee. Neither would “‘Wonderland’ transforms Alice’s surreal wanderings into a contemporary parable about reconnecting with your inner child and other watery truisms of the self-help industrial complex.” Kudos to Isherwood for pointing out that Alice’s “increasing exasperation to find her way home” is more Oz’s Dorothy than Alice: “a preoccupation that didn’t seem particularly urgent to the polite, spirited youngster in Carroll’s original.”
However, Adam Feldman’s proper panning for TimeOut New York was a spectacular parody of the Jabberwocky. It’s so good, I can’t resist posting it here in full:
’Tis Wildhorn, and the hapless cast
Does direly gambol on the stage.
All flimsy is the plot half-assed,
Not right for any age.
Beware of Wonderland, I warn!
The jokes that cloy, the scenes that flop!
Beware the humdrum words and scorn
The spurious, bland rock-pop!
The book’s a torpid bore in which
A newly single mom (Dacal)
Gets tested, see, by a journey she
Begins with quite a fall.
This modern Alice lands (ker-splat!)
In Wonderland, and banters some
With rabbit, caterpillar, cat
(In order: twee, dull, dumb).
She also meets a huffish Queen
Of Hearts (well-costumed Mason), and
A lady Hatter (Shindle, keen)
Who wishes to command.
These cartoon Carroll singers screech
The busy Wildhorn-Murphy score,
Which oft suggests a loud, high reach
At songs you’ve heard before.
A White Knight (Ritchie) does enact
A boy-band number that’s a lark—
But then comes the worst second act
Since poor Turn Off the Dark.
Act Two: Boo! Boo! And through and through
This Wonderland’s both slick and slack.
Dacal et al. can only do
So much to save the wrack.
And why has Wonderland been made?
Answer me that, director Boyd!
From captious gays to children dazed:
By all it’s unenjoyed.
’Tis Wildhorn, and the hapless cast
Does direly gambol on the stage.
All flimsy is the plot half-assed,
Not right for any age.
Thank you, Mr Feldman. If the LCSNA gave out an annual award for Jabberwocky parody (and we should, dash it all!) this would be a heavy favorite.
I’d also like to take this moment to mention that the actor playing the R&B-singing Caterpillar has an amazing name: E. Clayton Cornelious.
Following up on last year’s “Waking Nightmare,” this year, the critically acclaimed 
August 6, 2011
