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Page 6 DTH ' Omnibus Thursday November 29, 1990 Taking a magical journey into adulthood The Nutcracker: A Play presented by Playmakers Repertory Co. Saturday, Dec. 1 through Saturday, Dec. 22 8 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday 2 p.m. Sunday Paul Green Theatre For ticket information, call 962-1 1 21 avid Hammond is the artistic J Director of PlayMakers Rep- I ertory Company. He wrote I The Nutcracker: A Play, -J hrnAiired for the first time fry PRC last season. He directed last year s production and is directing this year's reprisal. This interview took place the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. . , -j , Omnibus: What other plays that you have written have been produced and where have they been produced? Hammond:! wrote several adapta tions of Moliere for the Lincoln Cen ter Student Program in the 1970s. They were produced and toured around New York. One of them played for two years at Lincoln Center. I've done a lot of translating from Russian and German. Recently, I have a version of Tom Jones that's been playingsummer stock it played California last summer. Three years ago it did a summer stock tour, and then last summer another company did it in California. My ad aptation of The Marriage of Figaro is going into rehearsal in Hong Kong right now, and I can't go. A Bakatsias 1 LUNCH SENSATIONSC Cheese Calzone Pesto Pizza Warm Smoked Turkey with caramelized onions and Danish havarti cheese on sourdough bread Cheese Tortellini with vegetables, tomato cream, garlic ana cracKea peppa Fettucini with fresh spring vegetables Eggplant Pancakes with tomatoes, musnrooms, onion uu cm uicw Greek Country Salad with tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, red onions, white beans, calamata olives, anchovies and feta cheese tossed in a vinaigrette Book Your Christinas University Square 143 Greg Miller IBS Q: After its big success last year, is your version of The Nutcracker being produced in other places? A: Yes. It's being done this Christ mas at the Hope Repertory Theatre in Michigan, and it's being done next year at a theater in California. Q: How does it feel to you person ally to have "your baby" come to life under your own hand? A: It's just like any other play (chuckle). As a quote-unquote play wright, and I do use quotes, I write specifically to a task. I'm not a con ceiver. I don't originate a tale that I'm dying to tell on a stage. I figure out how to tell a tale that exists, l con ceive the theatrical telling of the story. I do a lot of adapting and I'm con cerned really with the "how" of tell ing it. And I sort of separate functions. I consider myself a theater craftsperson more than a playwright. It's the same work as working a scene in rehearsal except I also add the words. It's exactly the same work, and I do that work and 1 hear the people talk, and then I write down the lines. And then when it's finally written down and I've seen them talking and I've heard them talking, I edit the scenes, and then I put it away. Then when I direct it, I treat it just like it was written by someone else, except that the re-writes are faster and the author never complains. Q: Most people know only about the ballet. What is the source mate rial for your play? A: The original book by E.T.A. Restaurant $3.95 $3.85 $4.75 $5.75 $4.75 articnoKe, spmacn, $4.65 $5.25 Parties & Caterings Now! W. Franklin St. 929-1 551 Ray Dooley and Pilar Herrera as Drosselmeier and Aunt Clara in Huffman Tr was written in 1823 in Germany. It's called Nutcracker and Mouse-king, and it's a book-length Christmas tale, rather episodic. The ballet is based on a French version that Alexandre Dumas wrote, called The Nutcracker of Nuremberg, which only tells the beginning of the story and then takes the trip to Candyland which is the basis of the ballet. In the actual book the trip to Candyland is like the last chapter after rather more complicated adven tures. In the ballet you never know whv in the world this person is a ... i 1 nuccracKer.anuLiidLiaicaiiy i si- 1 1 it t-Ka hoirr of the book, what that curse is. Jo tne basic impulse came from his book, and then I used several other stories of his to sort of flesh out themes that are in the book that I had to find a way to dramatize. Q: Is there a particular theme m the story that drove you to adapt it? I mean, what really attracted you to the story? A: Well ... what really attracted me was that we needed a good family playforChristmas,andwehad looked at several classic stories that might be able to be adapted: David Copperfield, Uttle Women, The Wind in the WiU lows, Alice in Wonderland, Treasure Island. After I did the Marriage of Figaro adaptation, McKay Coble (PRC costume designer) said, "Why don't you make a play out of The Nut- 1 -m II :J U ..m t-Uot-'rl cracKer: anu 1 wiu ywu, omt, u.ol be eood. t . 1 mmmm 11 .11 l i t. I I - ' '.'!' ,"-.,.''..' Thn when I read it. I was kind of appalled because it rambles all over the place. But it had the great line that a classic fairy tale has, which is the green world journey of the classic romance where the young couple goes into an enchanted place where they undergo trial, and then they emerge from the enchanted place better in formed, better equipped to deal with the real world. Once you see that line in it then it's got a classic theatrical structure. It's the structure of As You Like It. So then the question becomes, how An I hnilr! this line, how do I v - ----- 11 meaincauzc il: m ."J, conflict takes place offstage. She locks herself in her bedroom and the nut- cracker killed the mouse-prince in the next room ana sne just near uic battle. So how do we actually bring the two worlds togetner, uie um.c- world and the people-world? And then when I found that, it became a journey play, a journey tale, the magical journey, the journey of knowledge. And once that was struc- tured theatrically, it s a classic fairy tale, its a Bruno Bettelheim educa- tion-of-the-child fairy tale. The ar- chetypes are in the tale, and I m just adding human detail. It was an enor- mously satisfying place to exist tor a few months. Q: Can you give me a brief synop- sis ofthe story as you wrote it, without oivrinor anvthiriP 3WSV? u &.. - A: A Young girl on the threshold or aauunoou nas a uidgai ence that results in a journey into adulthood for herself that's one half of the story and the other half is a young man, a young boy on the threshold of adulthood, is interrupted in his development by this terrible curse and has to go on a journey that 1 r U 'The Nutcracker: A Play' prepares him for adulthood. They are able to do the journey because they find each other and help each other to prepare for the life ahead. It's really about growing up and how the most successful progression into adulthood involves the assimila tion of certain very basic things that children have that many of us give up as we move into adulthood, but the most successful adult is the one who carries a certain kind of innocence and a certain kind of purity and a certain naivete into adulthood in a changed form of course but one does not divorce oneself from one's child-life, one makes an alliance with the child and brings some of the child's viewpoints into adulthood. Hammond said he found that one of the most attractive things about Hoffman's writing was his ability to capture the true innocence of child hood, when emotions are full-blown and one at a time. He feels that Stephen King is capable of capturing this child-essence, he said. In many of King's stories, a truly innocent child is presented to the audience, and then the monster eats it. This is perhaps the most horrifying scenario. But in the srorv of the Nutcracker, Hoffman at least implies that the pure of heart can overcome the evil. Ditto for Hammond's play. Last year's production of The Nutcracker: A Play was a tremendous success that broke many PRC box office record. . I left feeling like I was seven years old, remembering what Christmas really feels like, experi encing the magic. If this year's re prisal can match last year's debut, it is well worth the evening and the ticket price. Take your family or take your love. I can't wait. .....
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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