¬Ý
¬Ý
Don't Forget To Scare The Kids ’Ä®The social relevance of adapting fairy tales for the stage ’Ä®a 2007 essay by Paul Boyd ¬© Paul Boyd 2007 "Children's Literature Does Not Exist" Since 1992 Paul Boyd has worked as an author and composer of original musical theatre with many works adapted from fairy tales and classic children’Äôs literature.¬Ý His canon currently includes sixteen stage musicals, all of which have enjoyed professional productions, with such titles as Hansel & Grettel, Red ’Äì The Red Riding Hood Musical, Rumpelstiltskin and The Elves and The Shoemaker.¬Ý His most regularly performed works include Alice The Musical (nominated as 'Best Drama' at the 1999 Belfast Arts Awards) and Pinocchio (nominated as 'Best Show For Children and Young People' at the 2007 TMA Theatre Awards). Rather than writing my shows specifically for children, I have always, perhaps selfishly, written them for my own entertainment ’Äì and I have since discovered through research that this is common among writers whose work is co-opted as children’Äôs entertainment.¬Ý As Professor Jack Zipes, whose research into fairy tales has inspired a great deal of my study, states in his book Sticks and Stones: The Troublesome Success of Children’Äôs Literature from Slovenly Peter to Harry Potter, ’ÄúChildren’Äôs literature per se does not exist.¬Ý Literature intended for young readers is always written for the author him or herself ’Ķ’Äù. It is common knowledge that fairy tales were not initially written as children’Äôs stories, and so over a period of years I have been compelled to research the role that these stories played in society before they were adapted and transformed into cautionary tales for children.¬Ý By understanding the original function of fairy tales, which John Updike describes as the ’Äútelevision and pornography of their day, the life-lightening trash of preliterate peoples,’Äù we are able to better evaluate the changes that subsequent societies have made to the stories and therefore make more informed decisions when adapting the tales for modern stage presentation. "The Witch Must Die" When adapting work for the stage, regardless of what we think an audience already knows of a story, the original text must be the starting point.¬Ý By way of example, when adapting Hans Christian Andersen’Äôs The Little Mermaid in 2004 for a water-based touring production, my storyboard was drawn from Andersen’Äôs own draft of the tale rather than the better-known Disney animated film version.¬Ý Ultimately, my production of The Little Mermaid played extensively across Ireland and the UK before embarking on a world tour which has, to date, taken the mermaid’Äôs story to Taiwan, Serbia and most successfully to Andersen’Äôs home country of Denmark.¬Ý I have witnessed audiences being universally moved by the mermaid’Äôs death and challenged by the tumultuous nature of her story - which was undoubtedly Andersen’Äôs original intention. As adaptor of the piece I was pleased that I had recognised my responsibility to remain true to that intention, irrespective of any anticipated audience expectation. Fairy tales were always meant to be told rather than read; they were always intended as performances of one kind or another.¬Ý Bruno Bettelheim, whose strict psychologist’Äôs perspective on fairy tales is often challenged by other specialists in the field, notes the reason why an imaginative performance of a tale is preferable to a slavish reading of one when he writes in his seminal work The Uses of Enchantment, ’ÄúThe loving grandmother who tells the tale to a child who, sitting on her lap, listens to it enraptured will communicate something very different than a parent who, bored by the story, reads it to several children of quite different ages out of a sense of duty.’Äù¬Ý When fairy tales emerged as entertainments for the masses there was always a storyteller whose job it was to relate the tales to the rest of the community.¬Ý This appointed performer was chosen as much because of his ability to portray characters and affect voices as his adeptness in shaping and modifying the story to suit his audience’Äôs reaction. In many ways fairy tales were society’Äôs first plays and storytellers were our earliest actors and adaptors.¬Ý In light of this, reading a fairy tale directly off the page, transcribed as it must have been by someone else, is the most ineffectual way to get a story across to an audience.¬Ý The theatre community ’Äì actors, directors, composers and adaptors ’Äì are the rightful heirs to the fairy tale legacy and it is up to us to keep alive the element of performance that is still evident in these tales that were clearly designed and honed over centuries of oral storytelling.¬Ý Fairy tales were hijacked by the written word, stolen by Perrault and the Grimms in the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries respectively, and it was at this point in history that the stories became written works to which any capable reader had immediate access.¬Ý From this point on the tales became easy targets, open to uninformed transformation and often rewritten to meet specific social needs; tales of lust and sexual awakening became, on the written page, stories of caution and moral instruction.¬Ý As the rightful heirs to the oral heritage that fairy tales represent, it is up to today’Äôs performing community to appreciate and understand the role that the stories played prior to their adoption by society as cautionary tales. With theatre producers and venue managements keen to avoid controversy Red is one of my least performed shows (with only five professional productions since 2000 at the time of writing) although interestingly, the cast recording is the best selling of my CD releases. "The Original Role of Fairy Tales" Having described theatre practitioners as the rightful heirs to the oral storytelling tradition I place adaptors and directors at the forefront of the battle to uphold the fairy tale legacy.¬Ý It is the job of story adaptors and stage directors to put before the public inspired and informed versions of tales that have doubtless been adapted and redirected many times before, not just on stage, but in books, films and on television.¬Ý The key to successful interpretations of these classic tales is understanding the role that the stories played in the society in which they originated.¬Ý In order to have lasted for so many years we can assume that fairy tales played some useful role in society prior to having cautionary and moralistic themes imposed upon them in the seventeenth century. We can chart the progress and development of today’Äôs best known fairy tales through the work of specialists such as Maria Tatar, Sheldon Cashdan and Jack Zipes - but examining how a tale evolved and became usefully employed by society leaves the most important question unanswered; what useful purpose did the story serve originally?¬Ý It may be a useful cautionary tale now, but what use did Little Red Riding Hood serve before?¬Ý Discovering the role that fairy tales once played in society sheds light on what role the tales can play in today’Äôs world, and therefore dictates how we should approach their presentation and adaptation.¬Ý Understanding how and why the tales worked centuries ago teaches us how and why we should be using them to greater effect today. Fairy tales are absolutely terrifying.¬Ý Keeping a society scared of external, irrational enemies such as wolves and witches kept that community, ultimately, together.¬Ý The society that was scared together was happy to stay together.¬Ý The same is true today.¬Ý This is why, for example, children enjoy ghost stories.¬Ý It is why, when presented with a campfire on a dark night, children will automatically opt to tell spooky tales and become collectively scared.¬Ý But there is a fine line: telling a group of children a terrifying story is their idea of entertainment - telling the same story to a single child is tantamount to abuse. This is not just true of children.¬Ý As adults we flock to¬Ýcinemas to watch horror movies ’Äì and yet many of us would never think of watching the same movie alone.¬Ý Being collectively terrified is a very different experience to being frightened as an individual. Being frightened en masse promotes the development of inter-community relations.¬Ý There is a sense of camaraderie that develops in the face of an outside threat and one of the side effects of being collectively frightened is that group dynamics develop, ultimately allowing members to find their place within society.¬Ý In the days when fairy tales were still oral tales the threats that the stories contained were very real, tangible dangers: there were wolves in the forest, there were reports of witches, children were abandoned, starvation was a possibility, magic spells were to be believed.¬Ý A society gathered around the campfire at night bonded through listening to these tales of external, feasible threats. "From Alarming To Charming" The true purpose of fairy tales has been contorted, hidden and ultimately abandoned by centuries of writers and adaptors who have imposed their own agendas onto the stories in order to give them an obvious and useful purpose.¬Ý Once Little Red Riding Hood was altered to include the scene where the little girl is told by her mother not to stray from the path, the dramatic emphasis and overall objective of the story shifted ’Äì the little girl strays from the path against parental advice and so becomes culpable for her own downfall;¬Ýit is now the little girl’Äôs own actions that lead her to the wolf and as a result he is no longer the indiscriminate predatory force that we must all fear.¬Ý The moral of the tale has changed from the terrifying ’Äòthe wolf will get you whatever you do’Äô to the more sanitised, emasculated ’Äòdo as you are told and you will be safe’Äô. The sanitising of the tales has been ongoing since 1697 when Perrault stripped many of the stories of their distasteful aspects in order to make them more suitable for the court of Louis XIV.¬Ý Today society is well-versed in cause and effect, well-used to excusing even the most abhorrent, errant behaviour on the grounds of upbringing, and the tales are in danger of losing their most important feature ’Äì that which makes them terrifying and therefore community building. Take an example from modern popular culture, one of my favourite movies Shrek. This film takes the wolf from Little Red Riding Hood and parades him attired in grandmother’Äôs nightgown and speaking in a broad New York accent.¬Ý In the same movie, the fearsome fire-breathing dragon from which damsels in distress have been rescued for centuries is reduced to a loveable, eyelash-fluttering suitor who falls in love with a donkey. Age-old villains are being stolen from literature and rendered impotent. That which we once found alarming we are now being encouraged to find charming.¬Ý Even more recently conceived embodiments of evil are being routinely excused and made human - take another cinematic example, another of my favourite films, Star Wars. Villainous Darth Vader, who throughout my childhood in the 1970s and 1980s epitomised the very darkest side of human nature, has now been featured front and centre in a trilogy of prequels that explain how his difficult youth was to blame for his eventual wickedness.¬Ý We are being encouraged to sympathise with evil as though it were an unavoidable outcome of circumstance. This isn’Äôt just a feature of modern cinema. Theatre, and particularly musical theatre, is currently playing an active role in sanitising that which we once feared.¬Ý The most inexcusable manifestation of evil in modern American literature is the Wicked Witch of the West from L. Frank Baum’Äôs The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.¬Ý ¬ÝThe Wicked Witch’Äôs life and times is explored in the Tony Award-winning musical Wicked, a show adapted from Gregory Maguire’Äôs 1995 novel.¬Ý It is explained that a difficult upbringing lead an unfortunate girl to become embroiled in a set of circumstances and that she became mistakenly known as a wicked witch, with all of her subsequent actions misinterpreted due to this misconception.¬Ý Wicked goes further than simply asking us to understand the character’Äôs predicament and forgive her actions, it actually admonishes the audience for having been party to the misunderstanding by having only ever watched or read The Wizard of Oz from one particular point of view. "Don't Forget To Scare The Kids" Research shows that the most powerful aspect of fairy tales and their modern equivalents is the fear that they inspire us to share. Current trends in popular culture, cinema, and theatre are in danger of depriving us of any benefit that storytelling might ever have had.¬Ý The greatest fear, we are being told, is fear itself and in order to save society from having to face fear we are methodically removing it from the agenda.¬Ý We have forgotten to scare the kids.¬Ý And the question arises ’Äì if we, the modern storytellers, are no longer providing an outside, external threat against which society can rally and in the face of which communities can bond, where does society now project its fears?¬Ý The only possible answer is, inwardly. It isn’Äôt too much of a stretch to conclude that popular culture’Äôs trend towards ridding classic literature of fear is resulting in the break-up of community and the promotion of a dysfunctional society. Fairy tales are a centuries-old resource that we, the storytellers, have forgotten how to use.hansel_and_grettel.htmlred.htmlalice.htmlpinocchio.htmllittle_mermaid.htmllittle_mermaid.htmlpbm_resources.htmlshapeimage_2_link_0shapeimage_2_link_1shapeimage_2_link_2shapeimage_2_link_3shapeimage_2_link_4shapeimage_2_link_5shapeimage_2_link_6
I have no doubt that the reason that my musicals have proven to be so popular is due to their wide audience appeal.¬Ý Although not strictly speaking children’Äôs shows, children clearly enjoy my works and family audiences are encouraged to attend by the instantly recognisable titles.¬Ý In the comparatively small theatrical environment of my native Ireland, wide audience appeal has always been imperative if a show is to survive and go on to enjoy revivals.¬Ý The fact that both adults and children feel they can attend shows like Hansel & Grettel and Alice The Musical ensures that productions can run for up to three or four months at a time before going on to be revived for many years across the country.hansel_and_grettel.htmlalice.htmlalice.htmlshapeimage_3_link_0shapeimage_3_link_1shapeimage_3_link_2
At the end of my adaptation of The Little Mermaid the title character dies, just as she does in the original story ’Äì but note that this is in sharp contrast to the changed ending that is better known to audiences familiar with the Disney cartoon.¬Ý In the Disney film the mermaid not only lives, she ends up marrying the prince.¬Ý Many colleagues tried to warn me that such a downbeat ending would not play well with audience members, the majority of whom would feel that they already knew the story having seen Disney’Äôs version; but I felt strongly that the tale had thrived for one hundred and fifty years prior to Disney’Äôs re-write and that if any success was to be emulated, it should be that of the Andersen original.¬Ý little_mermaid.htmlshapeimage_6_link_0
In my musical of Hansel & Grettel, which has now undergone many professional productions since it premiered in 1997, the witch does indeed die ’Äì pushed into her own oven by a small child.¬Ý It is satisfying to note that the audience has never complained that this action is in anyway inappropriate.¬Ý My audience gains as much enjoyment from the witch’Äôs demise as the storyteller’Äôs audience did centuries ago.¬Ý In my Red Riding Hood musical Red, greatly influenced by the research of Professor Jack Zipes, the little girl is indeed challenged by a terrifying creature in the depths of an atmospheric wood, just as the original story dictates.¬Ý Red is the darkest in tone of my fairy tale-inspired musicals, based as it is on one of history’Äôs darkest stories.¬Ýhansel_and_grettel.htmlhttp://pbmusicals.com/red.htmlhttp://pbmusicals.com/red.htmlshapeimage_10_link_0shapeimage_10_link_1shapeimage_10_link_2
¬Ý