介绍:
This production, The Princess and The Pea, is part of the US Missoula Children's Theatre's unique international touring project. The theatre company based in Missoula, Montana, is world renowned and has been touring for more than 30 years.
As soon as they arrived in Beijing, the two American directors from the play got into intense and emotional rehearsals with children performers from a local art school and four primary schools in Beijing.
Allison Kauling is a co-director of The Princess and The Pea.
"And so far they've been great. It's so impressive they know their lines. They know their lines. They know a lot of already of where their supposed to be standing on stage. And you can tell they have done a lot of work with characters. So it's been really great. We were very excited."
The mention of The Princess and The Pea story would oftentimes remind people of a literary fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen.
However according to Hannah Barudin, another director of the play, it isn't your grandma's PRINCESS AND THE PEA any more.
"I'm one of the co-directors of this, but also I play a part of chief who is one of the head Leprechauns. All of the Missoula plays are a little different than the original fairy tale. There are no Leprechauns in the fairy tale of The Princess and The Pea. Also I play a captain in a narrator to help move the story from one point to the next."
The story was set in a kingdom of snow where the residents are Winter Wind Workers, Blizzard Bringers, Icicle Sharpeners and Snow Smoothers, ruled by the Storm King and the Snow Queen. Add to that a Prince looking for a proper Princess to share the throne.
Meanwhile, the Princess and her friend the Pea live in a kingdom of green rolling hills and running rivers with her subjects, The Flower Gardeners, River Runners, Green Shoot Growers and Tree Barkers. Although the two kingdoms think they have nothing in common, the peace-loving Leprechauns prove otherwise.
Hannah Barudin thinks what's made the new adapted story unique is a positive message carried by their show.
"In this show, the ending is in the normal happy ending, where the prince marries the princess, Cause that's not how our show ends. So I like it's that everyone gets to be a little more independent and it ends in a more unique way---that's my favorite part of show. We, the Missoula Children's Theatre, want to send out a message of teamwork and collaboration, working together to make the world a better place."
Hannah Barudin is the only adult performer in the show. All children performers come from the primary schools or Malan Flower Art School in Beijing.
11-year old Fan Jiaxi acts Queen Size in the musical. She enjoys the ongoing rehearsal with the American directors because she believes she will learn a lot from them.
"Above all, I improved my English. The American director spoke so fast that I could hardly catch up with her. My English proficiency has been improved, so has my ability to perform. I have never acted as a queen before. The Queen Size that I act is very strict with her daughter. I underlined my part in the script, to remind me on pronunciation, tone, what feelings to express as well as what actions I should make to highlight the setting."
An all-English musical not only poses young Chinese performers challenges due to language barriers, but may also be difficult for young audiences to understand.
However, Hannah Barudin believes even though Chinese audiences may not fully understand the show, they would get immersed in it.
"But I think there's a lot in the play to be enjoyed by Chinese kids. The characters are very funny and the kids do a really good job of bringing out the humor in it. So I think it'll be a fun time for everybody."
Every week, the Missoula Children's Theatre will go into a local town, work with 15 or 16 children from that town and put them into the show, rehearse and eventually they will perform on the weekend.
This time, the Theatre has brought their The Princess and the Pea around 10 thousand kilometers away to Beijing for the ongoing 5th China Children's Theatre Festival.
Allison Kauling, a co-director of The Princess and The Pea, describes this unprecedented experience during her work at the theatre.
"As I've been told that this is the first time that something like this has happened that in an American theater, a children theater came over and its capacity to work with the children theater. So I think hopefully this is a great start to something more in the future. But so far it's been great and I hope that we continue this partnership."
The Princess and the Pea, which is co-presented and produced by the Missoula Children's Theatre and China National Theatre for Children, is a fruit of the China-US cultural exchanges.
Hannah Barudin thinks the China Children's Theatre Festival also advances the cultural exchanges.
"I think the US and China are pretty far apart, but at the end: they come together and they work together to solve the problem of the play. And that's really a nice way to express the US and China working together on this project in the festival."
Since the end of July, the festival enters a special international children's theatre week, during which China theatres' joint productions with the US, Finland, South Korea amongst others will debut in Beijing.
The festival spans the entire summer vacation to the end of this month and many wonderful plays and musicals still await their performance. So children here in Beijing, don't miss the chance to shine!
For Studio Plus, I'm Shen Ting.
大家还在听
