Gregory Maguire Talks "Wicked", Teases Nutcracker... (Drosselmeyer!)

Broadway hit Wicked (which is nearing it's 10th anniversary!) heads to Manila this month, debuting on January 22nd with an Australian cast (you can see a slide show of the Australian production HERE).

As part of promoting the new production there, Gregory Maguire was recently e-interviewed (it's an official thing now) by Philippine newspaper The Star about, not only his thoughts on seeing his book head to the stage (and quickly become "a commotion"*), but also about his writing life and upcoming book plans.

Wicked Elphaba by Laura Mossop

The article also included an excerpt from the Auckland, NZ, show program for Wicked last year which, if you haven't read before is pretty wonderful:

...(Maguire) noted in the souvenir program for the Wicked run in Auckland, New Zealand (which The STAR covered late last year): “When Stephen Schwartz approached me with the notion of turning Wicked into a musical play, I needed much less persuading that I let on,” adding that “… from the opening anthem’s foreboding figure of notes… the score for Wicked respects the book’s tensions and ambiguities” making the figures who once lived solely in his head seem more real,” he added.

To have your book turned into another (professionally produced) art form is pretty fantastic but to feel that the people doing that understand your vision and "get" your work? That's on the rare side and completely thrilling.

Here are some excerpts from the recent e-interview:

Can you recall the exact moment when the idea of Wicked first came to you? 

“No. But I do remember the moment when I realized that the information we did have about the story was incomplete. In one of the songs from the MGM film (The Wizard of Oz), the Cowardly Lion sings, ‘What makes the Hottentot so hot?’ Even at the age of eight, I knew that Hottentots were from Africa, not from Oz: So how could the Cowardly Lion use such a reference? Similarly, when Dorothy sings to the Tin Man, ‘You could be another Lincoln…’ he doesn’t stop the song to ask, ‘What’s a Lincoln?’ They are not telling us the whole story, I said to myself, and scrunched closer to the TV to see what else was going on.” 

You’ve said in interviews that you don’t write anything that doesn’t ask big questions. What’s the biggest question and message readers will take away from Wicked? 

“What is the true nature of evil? Is evil determined by culture, by history, by God or by spirits, by the accident of birth or the behavior of individuals? I can’t say I provide an answer, but this is a question we do well to ask ourselves over and over. It is never an old question.” 

Wicked by Tim Shumate

What’s your daily writing life like? 

“I try to write about five pages a day when I am writing a new novel, and a first draft is usually done in a couple of months. The older I get, the more time I spend on revisions — my newest book has gone through eight drafts. It is out next year. (I’m working on) a book called Egg & Spoon, a fantasy set in Tsarist Russia about the time of Dr. Zhivago, more or less.”

(By the way - the projected date for that book's release is still "sometime during Fall 2014".)

And now for the news that had me probably more excited than I should be, especially since it's still in the "vague idea" stage:

If there’s another classic tale you’d want to give a “wicked” treatment, what would that be and why? 

“I have been playing with the idea of writing a book called Drosslemeyer, about the godfather who gives Klara the Nutcracker in the story of the same name. I don’t know why I would want to write that. Writing it would give me the answer.”

!!!!

Drosselmeyer by Artuš Scheiner

Nutcracker (and, in particular, the character of Drosselmeyer) has so much potential to me. Unfortunately it often feels like Clara (Klara?) reaches the Kingdom of Sweets and people fall into a sugary malaise of... nothing.

Only two (that I can think of) interpretations come to mind that attempt to mine Hoffman's story for retelling potential (remembering that this was a whole, literary work, by the way): one is Graeme Murphy's Nutcracker: The Story of Clara for the Australian Ballet, about a Russian dancer, migrating and growing older (available to view on DVD). The other (at almost the opposite end of the scale) is a video made for a college assignment by a student who used Britney Spears' song Toy Soldier (What? Yes - right there with you!) and blended the choreography with images and symbols from the traditional Nutcracker ballet in an attempt to empower girls instead of have them waiting to be rescued. It's actually more successful than it sounds. Yes I was surprised too. (You can click HERE to see it on YouTube if you'd like. It's a much better than average amateur video, especially once it gets started on the song/choreography portions.)

It's bizarre because I always thought Nutcracker could be quite epic. Drosselmeyer is a completely fascinating character, the music is wonderful and well known and it's a tradition for many people to go see Nutcracker at Christmas time so there's an audience already built in.

Nutcracker by Natasha Tabatchikova

But I digress.

You can read the whole fascinating interview HERE (note: sometimes the website has difficulty loading but keep trying, it's worth it). While it's not very lengthy, it packs a lot into a page.

What do you think of Maguire's next fairy tale-based novel consideration?

* Wicked fans will get my reference. :)

Fairy Tale News New Year's Bumper Edition: Artists & illustrators (past & present)

• Coco Miles, a props and sculpture artist, has fairy tale pieces in her portfolio, including Baba Yaga and Rumpelstiltskin.

• "Jack and Jill Return to the Hill" A too-late entry to the Sci-Fi Fairy Tales contest held by Super Punch during December 2009. This entry came with a complete story about Jack and Jill in a sci-fi context too. See link for a summary.

• Little Red vs Wolves - LOTS of wolves! by woohyun Nam. see more of his work at the link.

• Belarus beautiful fairy tale coins - Fairy tale designs include The Stone Flower, The Twelve Months, The Nutcracker, Turandot, Alice in Wonderland, Alice Through the Looking Glass, Thousand and One Nights, Symon the Musician. Simply gorgeous!

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BACK TO: CONTENTS

Stories for the Season: The Nutcracker (Like You've Never Seen It Before)

I mentioned I was going to focus on Christmas/Yule/Winter Solstice appropriate tales over the remainder of the Holiday season so it makes sense to start with "Nutcracker"."The Nutcracker" is possibly 'the' fairy tale most think of when it comes to Christmas time and I'm often surprised to hear of the types of people that make going to see a 'Nutcracker" ballet production a yearly tradition. People who don't normally think about fairy tales or follow ballet often grew up going with their parents so it's become something Christmas wouldn't be complete without.

Since a lot of you follow the SurLaLune blog too I won't repeat much about E.T.A. Hoffman's story, the many books which beautifully illustrate it or the traditional ballet. Instead I have two Nutcracker offerings you may not have come across before, both by ballet companies.
The first is Matthew Bourne's Nutcracker and has a few twists to the story, although it remains a family-friendly ballet with a strong positive Christmas feel.Here's a summary from The Royal Sadler's Wells Ballet Company - a production that's quickly become loved and a new tradition itself:

This delicious theatrical feast has family-sized helpings of Matthew Bourne's trademark wit, pathos and magical fantasy. Nutcracker! follows Clara's bittersweet journey from a hilariously bleak Christmas Eve at Dr. Dross' Orphanage, through a shimmering, ice-skating winter wonderland to the scrumptious candy kingdom of Sweetieland.

There's a whole website especially about Matthew Bourne's Nutcracker too, with tons more information - you can see that HERE.Here's a montage/promo:


It's also available on DVD HERE.
The second is a more adult ballet, choreographed by Graeme Murphy for The Australian Ballet Company and is called "Nutcracker - the Story of Clara".Here's the summary:

This is no ordinary Nutcracker; it is a quintessentially Australian reinterpretation created by the incomparable Graeme Murphy, who was for many years the driving spirit of the Sydney Dance Company. It is a reinterpretation that celebrates the history of ballet in Australia, and of the Australian Ballet itself with its links to the great Russian ballet tradition. In this version, Clara is not a child but a frail Russian ex-ballerina, reliving her illustrious career (Edit FTNH: through feverish dreams) on a hot summer night in Melbourne (Edit FTNH: Christmas is, of course, blisteringly hot in Australia!), and looking back on her St Petersburg days with a group of her fellow expatriate dancers. In the course of this career we see child Clara on her opening night, Clara at the height of her career, and the older Clara looking back.

Here you can see the film that's projected onto the back scrim during a key sequence - "Graeme Murphy's Nutcracker is set on a sweltering Melbourne Christmas Eve in the late 1950s. Clara is not a child but a frail ex-ballerina, reliving her rich and eventful life in one night of feverish dreams. This film segment is projected over the whole set; it sets the scene for the start of the Russian revolution. The Bolsheviks are now portrayed as rats and our heroin is woven amongst this extraordinarily well shot footage of Siegei Eisenstein's Oktiabr (October: Ten Days That Shook the World), which was - incredibly! - filmed some 80 years ago..." (from the video description):

You can learn a lot more about Graeme Murphy's Nutcracker ballet and see lots more images HERE and/or get a copy of the production on DVD HERE.
Both use Tchaikovsky's score, are beautiful and are undeniably 'Nutcracker', albeit in different ways. If you love the Nutcracker ballet or dance and ballet in general I highly recommend them both.

"Alma" by Rodrigo Blaas

Here's a little treat for the season - especially with my focus for the coming week of Christmas/Yule stories. Just announced today, for a limited time over Christmas you can see a new animated short online about a very sweet little girl and a creepy toyshop. It's not specifically for Christmas but fits with the current focus on Winter (in the Northern hemisphere), children and toys. This short film is already busy winning awards all over the place.While it is kinda spooky it doesn't have any truly scary images - it's more the concept. But it's very in keeping with fairy tales - especially those by E.T.A. Hoffman (Nutcracker anyone?).Here's the announcement from Cartoon Brew:

For a limited time during the holidays, Rodrigo Blaas has made his spooky CG short Alma available for viewing online. Blaas is an animator at Pixar who took time off from the studio and returned to his native Spain to make this independent film. His brother, Alfonso Blaas, served as the film’s art director. The film’s official website is AlmaShortFilm.com.

I'm posting the teaser so you can a) have a preview and b) when the video is no longer available, people visiting the blog can still have a taste of this wonderful short.

The teaser:

The full short - for a limited time only during Christmas 2009:

Alma from Rodrigo Blaas on Vimeo.

Nutcracker Heading For An Action Movie Makeover

The Nutcracker

Poster design for Jefferson Performing Arts Society
by Lisa K. Weber

This could be a lot of fun - "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King" is heading for a family action film in the vein of "The Chronicles of Narnia".

There aren't a lot of details yet. The pitch was just accepted by New Line Cinema from the writer behind Jack the Giant Killer (Darren Lemke), currently in production under the direction of Bryan Singer, making news today.

It would seem the film will be going back to the original E.T.A. Hoffman story which is rather more complex than the tale is portrayed as being in the popular Christmas ballet.From Reuters & ABC:

The story centers on a 12-year-old girl, her brother and sister, who receive gifts from their clockmaker-inventor godfather on Christmas Eve, one of which is a Nutcracker doll. That night, the girl embarks on an adventure that includes a war involving a seven-headed Mouse King and his army of mice.

The story, with its themes of ugliness and beauty, has been adapted into various forms of animation, and the ballet version has found itself on screens many times.

... Lemke has worked often with folk and fairy tales; in addition to writing "Giant," he worked on DreamWorks Animation's fairy tale-skewing "Shrek Forever After." He also worked with Temple Hill on an update of "The Wizard of Oz."

You can read the rest of the article HERE.

There seems to be some skepticism about the concept but then I'm guessing those people haven't read the original story. There are some insights HERE on the kind of man and writer Hoffman was. I also found a very interesting article on the illustrator of the pieces shown in this post (bar the illustrations at the head and tail), Jan Pienkowski. Mr. Pienkowski purposely explored the darker side of the Hoffman story in his illustrations and discusses that in this interesting article HERE.Here's an excerpt:

Pienkowski realised the story of The Nutcracker could be drawn in a way that was not as we have come to know it - all sugary sweet like the Tchaikovsky ballet. It became clear that his portrayal could be dark and magical, reflecting the much scarier tale first written in German in 1816 by ETA Hoffmann. And so, in Nut Cracker, a new version of the story translated by David Walser (Pienkowski's lifelong partner) and published in time for Christmas, a gothic Godfather Drossel­meier has been born, complete with spiked hair and biker boots...

... In Hoffmann's - and Pienkowski's - version the tale takes place over several nights and is far more complicated and menacing. The story of the war of the mice is told by Drosselmeier himself, perched on top of a clock with his cloak spread out behind him like wings. The tale he tells is of a time when he was clockmaker to the royal palace. In an act of revenge on the King and Queen for the murder of her seven sons, the Mouse Queen turns the royal baby, Princess Pirlipat, into a shrivelled creature with piercing eyes and a mouth 'like a gash from ear to ear'. The only way of lifting the spell on the Princess is to find a boy capable of cracking a Krakatuk nut. The boy who can crack the nut turns out to be Drosselmeier's nephew, but as he lifts the curse on the Princess it falls on him, and he in turn is changed into a shrivelled creature with a wide mouth - a nutcracker. The only way for Drossel­meier's nephew to be restored is to kill the Mouse Queen's seven-headed son, born after the deaths of her other sons. The battle that ensues is the beginning of the ballet as we know it.

'There was a bit at the end of the German original when the nutcracker becomes a real man, introduced to Clara and her family, and then suddenly starts walking around the drawing-room cracking nuts with his teeth,' Walser says. 'I thought this rather far-fetched and sinister so I cut it out. But when I told a seven-year-old girl I'd cut it, she was so disappointed. Children like that kind of dark complexity, you see.'

You can read the whole of the long article HERE.

Drosselmeyer's workshop...
by Steering For North/Cate

If the movie makers do their research we could be in for a very interesting movie.

The SurLaLune blog just had a week dedicated to Nutcracker so be sure to go and check those entries for more Nutcracker goodness (HERE).

Red October: Russian Fairy Tale Fashion A Theme on 2009 Fall/Winter Runways

I'm going to call today 'odds 'n' ends Monday' with this being the first post (see note below) in a number of random little fairy tale related things I found in the last week.

(NOTE: RE-POSTED DUE TO LARGE CONTENT UPDATE)

To kick things off, here's some lovely fairy tale-type fashion from Russia which reminds me of some Vasilissa illustrations I've seen (the clothing, not the model attitude).

Apparently, Russian fairy tale style fashion influence was a recurring theme on the premier runways for the 2009 Fall/ Winter season. (Found at the UK Telegraph. You can find descriptions of the clothing HERE.)

I also found an article and a video on the fashion series for you. This article talks about the influences and approach of the fashion creator and stylist (which included a matriochka doll as he was starting his Russian style showings this past year). Here's an excerpt:

But fashion would not be the weird and wonderful world it most certainly is without some fairytale element to delight, astound or even just amuse us. This winter the fantasy revolves around a romanticised Russia; land of the firebird, the sugarplum fairy, Zara, Dr Zhivago and Anastacia. Not since Yves Saint Laurent based a collection upon the Ballets Russes more than thirty years ago, has fashion so fallen under the Soviet spell.

You can read more HERE.

Here's the video, which is a beautiful little piece to watch, even if fashion isn't of huge interest to you:


Some lovely inspiration. I'm ready to write a Russian fairy tale now. :)

Provensen's "Tales from the Ballet"

From their book "Tales from the Ballet" (Golden Press 1968) by Caldecott Medal winners illustrators Alice and Martin Provensen*. As the title suggests, many of these tales are fairy tales. Either ballets were created from old tales like Sleeping Beauty and Ivanand the Firebird or new fairy tales like Giselle were written, often based on a little piece of something else (Giselle was based on a poem). The Nutcracker, of course, is originally by E. T. A. Hoffman, truncated and adapted from his very long short story 'Nutcracker and the Mouse King' .

The Sleeping Princess Coppelia (2 images) The Golden Cockerel Giselle
The Nutcracker
The Firebird

You can find more on the Provensen husband-and-wife author and illustration team* HERE and see the lovely Alice Provensen gallery HERE.

NOTES:
*The Provensen's are not credited with writing 'Tales from the Ballet' as well as illustrating it. The writer is listed as Louis Untermeyer.
*The Provensen's didn't win the Caldecott for this book but for "A Glorious Flight", a biographical picture book about an aviator.
*Some of these images were found on Flickr. The others were found on various foreign rare book seller sites.