Live & Local: Third Side Theatre's Original Production of "The Princess & the Goblins"
Do you ever wonder where fantasy authors like Lewis Carroll, C.S. Lewis, and J.R. Tolkien get their inspiration from? One source is a book from 1872 called The Princess & the Goblins, and the Colorado-based Third Side Theatre Company, specializing in "theatre from scratch," has created a new original play from this fairytale.
"We didn't always know how the details were going to fall, but we believed in what was being put together. And in this show in particular, the character Irene is following a magical thread from her great, great grandmother that she's supposed to trust. Her grandmother says, 'It may seem a roundabout way to you, but you should not doubt the thread.' And so that's been my personal mantra throughout this process of just follow the thread, Kellie, follow the thread, because it has been a leap of faith in so many ways.. It really is a labor of love. And I personally have been involved in writing it, acting in it, making shadow puppets, making regular puppets, painting them, buying some costume pieces. We've all kind of shared the different lanes and hats, but in a really cool way where our director, Aaron, is always using the kind of improv motto of 'Yes, and…' - How can we take each other's ideas and build off of them and just create something better together than any of us could do on our own." - Writer and Production Co-Director Kellie Fox
The handmade puppets and immersive shadow puppets are brought to life by a completely original musical score, which is like another character in itself.
"Well, it required a lot of abstract thought. What would a goblin world sound like? And so I'm thinking of rocks and dinginess, and at the same time, something not really of this world. So we were like, okay, synthesizers for the goblins, as much like techno elements as we can. For the great, great grandmother, she's like the ancestral character, giving her the thread of her destiny. And she represents 'The Ancestors', more plural, in this one character. And so we pulled from Christian contemporary music, they put on a pad that just kind of feels heavenly, and the whole song they've got that underneath it. And so we pulled that, put some banjo on it and a vocoder, because my initial idea was to have people harmonize, but they're all so busy - There's five people doing a trillion characters, and they're all changing costumes, grabbing puppets and stuff. So I run it into a vocoder so that way I can harmonize with myself and it still feels kind of computer-y at the same time, and not human, exactly, like more than human." - Music Director and Composer Karim Islam
Third Side Theatre Co. opened The Princess & the Goblins last weekend at The People's Building off of E Colfax in Aurora. Now entering its final weekend, the community has one more chance to catch this production with a mission to spark imagination.
"Yeah, it's like a good book. We're not asking the audience to do a magic trick. We're not asking the audience to get on the stage. We're not asking anything of them except to have their imaginations fully engaged in the show while they're watching it. And I think that that is often overlooked when it comes to theater magic and something that I hope people will really glom onto." - Director and Production Co-Director Aaron Vega
The following audio piece includes some of the original compositions from this production:
More information at Third Side Theatre Company
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