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Author
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Comment
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tigermiep
Registered User
(4/5/05 8:04 pm)
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tales on stage
Cap o' Rushes onstage IN VERSE!
oh yes, it's true. i am currently writing a little play of Cap o' Rushes for my first graders to perform at the end of next month. my goal is to write something that is in verse, and therefore easier to remember, but also as true to the tale itself as possible. i am working from Jacob's _English Fairy Tales_. should i look elsewhere?
how have you reacted to presentations of tales onstage? I have attended one panto of cinderella and was amused and appalled by turns. as for other tales, snow white and rose red seems a popular one at our school.
what makes a stage presentation "true"? (yes, i realize that oral tradition allows for modern changes, but i am of the opinion that the underlying integrity of a tale is often muddled or entirely obscured by attempts at modernization for modernization's sake...)
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Black
Sheep
Registered User
(4/6/05 1:18 pm)
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Re: tales on stage
I love Cap o' Rushes.
I can give you the bibliography for the tale Tigermiep but I don't believe that any one version should take precedence over any other unless the tale is being considered historically. What matters is whether the tale seems true to you, and whether you can be true to your vision of the tale, and whether you as author and director can communicate a sense of the trueness of the tale to your performers, and whether they feel the tale is true while they perform it. In this case I don't think the audience are important because they will be strongly invested in the performance in ways which you're unlikely to be able to surpass. If a significant proportion of the kids are enthused by their participation in the event and its preparation then you've succeeded as a teacher.
Bibliography:
The tale was originally published in 1878 in the Ipswich Journal and can be found here:
www.pitt.edu/~dash/salt.html#rushes
It was retold by Jacobs in 1894
I assume a version of it was in Katherine Briggs, 1970-1, A Dictionary of Folk-Tales in the English Language, part A, volume ii
The original was reprinted with informed commentary in Neil Philip, The Penguin Book of English Folktales, 1992 (which is the best resource for most English folktales but can be difficult to find outside libraries and is usually expensive secondhand.)
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