Variety: At the Off-Broadway premiere of “Alice by Heart,” a new musical from “Spring Awakening” creators Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik and inspired by “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” conversations with the cast and creatives revealed the impact of their work on a generation of theater-makers, including their young stars — and what the pair learned from them in return.
2 comments:
Spring Awakening’s intensely popular reaction among my generation makes me excited to see this new work by the same creators. Their focus on mental illness is a story I believe that many individuals my age would relate to and appreciate. The fact that one of the writer’s had a personal experience with using books as an outlet when dealing with mental illness is an aspect I can definitely understand. Growing up, books were a way for me to escape. I formed such personal relationships with writers and characters who I had never spoken to, but felt I had a connection with. The silent, non-visual aspects of novels allowed my imagination to roam and grow, which is an idea these writers are trying to implement. Realism is essential in theatre, but art should not be limited to just the things we can see and recognize. Throwing in non-realistic plays with elements of fantasy can sometimes teach us more about ourselves and our feelings.
Alice is a hard read because, as mentioned in the article, it is very wild and Lewis must have been on something when he wrote it. Because of that, the book never really meant anything to me, but books in general were really important to me, especially Lewis Carrol's Chronicles of Narnia. Books were obviously a means of escapism, but it is also where it formed my earliest opinions and i am interested in how they will handle how book shape a young persons perception of the world. The choice to focus the story on mental illness I think will appeal to our generation well and hopefully be a healthy way of addressing that conversation which I think hasn't been handled so well in the recent past with some productions. I hope this musical succeeds because Spring Awakening is one of my favorite productions and I'd love to see more from them. I think they handle serious topics that are being avoided entirely very well.
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