Today was the last day of our residency with D.C. Everest. The time flew by and we had an absolute blast working with these incredibly talented young artists. Their enthusiasm, passion and love of theatre was so contagious… but we’ll talk more about that tomorrow.

Today we wrapped up our time together spending the day focusing in on character development, story structure and dramatrugy. Students began the day sharing the character’s they’ve been working on. After they shared with each other students found out they will be taking their characters and writing their own short fairy-tale based on their character. These stories will be a part of the lobby display on view prior to all shows and will give the audience an opportunity to learn more about their characters and see the incredibly work they’ve put in to the show.

We then moved on to analyzing story structure, and discussed that in order for a show to reach it’s full potential, it needs to have “good, solid bones” aka- a clear understanding of the structure of your story. We reviewed the basic structure of all stories contains:

• Beginning: meet the characters; learn the setting; see everyday life; the conflict comes and disrupts the status quo
• Middle: character try to fix the problem… and fail, try to fix the problem… and fail, and so on until finally things begin to somewhat fall in place and the climax occurs (aka the most exciting part)
• End: resolution; falling action; see “new” everyday life.

We used this model to analyze Once Upon a Mattress and then in small groups students were given stories from other cultures that were similar to the story in their show to analyze. The started by comparing and contrasting Once Upon a Mattress with their given story, and then plotted it out according to story structure.

From there we segued into talking about the important role research plays when creating the world of our show. If theatre is to imitate humans and human experiences then we need to create a world that is just as interesting/complex as the world we live in.

On Sunday we were able to make some awesome choices hat helped inform the world of the show. We established:

• the year their show takes place is 1350. They used evidence from the script to support that the world of the play seems to be in transition and moving away from the oppressive culture of the dark ages to the more enlightened time of the Renaissance.
• the location is in Germany near the Swiss boarder. They justified this because there is much talk about the mountains surrounding the kingdom.
• The other really cool thing students came up with was a very interesting idea regarding “who” the narrators are talking to in the show (we’ve worked all week on the idea of identifying the “who”, since unless specified you never directly should address the audience). So, about 15 years in the future the narrators, the Jester and Minstrel, are telling the daughter of Prince Dauntless and Princess Winnifred about how her parents met. She currently is trying to find a Prince to marry, however her Grandmother is getting in the way so they tell her this story as a way to inspire her to stand up to her Grandma. (so cool, right?!?!?!)

Using this information students were divided into small groups and researched the following topics: General life in 1350 and what it was like to be a royalty during that time; the history behind the story of The Princess and the Pea; the moral of the Princess and the Pea and Once Upon a Mattress; Adaptations of The Princess and the Pea; and Production history of Once Upon a Mattress. They were given 20 minutes to gather information, then shared their findings with others and discussed how this research will impact their character and/or the production. Together students complied their research and their findings will be put into a dramaturgy packet that can be used by students and staff as they continue to create and define the world of the play.

We spent the rest of the time recapping our time together, but we will go into that more in tomorrow. Check back tomorrow night for one last blog about our time with the D.C. Everest Performing Arts Department… going back to the “real world” will definetly be rough after the phenomenal time with these students.

Also… PS. It’s the INCREDIBLE, AMAZING, TALENT, AND ALL AROUND BEST HUMAN, Marcus Newton’s Birthday!! Happy Birthday, Marcus! Hope you’re day was full of musical magic <3