Two versions of ‘Alice in Wonderland:’ One is a play, the other a musical

Students at The Pathway School in Jeffersonville have been described all different ways — as people with autism, and as people with neurological impairments. This summer, the students can tack on a different label: people who write plays.

The result?

“The Alice Express,” adapted by the students from Lewis Carroll’s 1865 children’s classic, “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” and staged over the next few weekends by the Hedgerow Theatre Company using professional actors.

“This is such a wonderfully creative and playful piece,” said Marcie Bramucci, Hedgerow’s executive artistic director.

The effort started early in the school year, when Bramucci reached out to Pete Pryor, Pathway’s theater arts program director. Bramucci and Pryor are longtime collaborators in the field of accessible theater — aimed at making people who experience the world differently feel welcome at the theater.

Bramucci asked Pryor if his students would be willing to do an adaptation of the novel, more commonly known as Alice in Wonderland. Pryor agreed, instantly.

“We took a chapter of the book, and we would look at it for about a week or so. They would adapt their version of it from Alice’s point of view,” Pryor said, describing the classroom process. “They would do it as if it were set in modern day — what she would be doing and who she would be running into.”

For example, instead of being bored in the woods with her sister, as she is in the novel, Alice is bored on a school bus, thumbing through her phone. Instead of encountering Carroll’s White Rabbit, Alice pursues Mr. White, a businessman, who has stolen her phone. And instead of tumbling down a rabbit hole, as Alice does in the book, she falls into a manhole.

After the students created their adaptations, Pryor and playwright Emma Gibson massaged them into a scripted play, The Alice Express. Kelsely Hébert directs a professional cast.

“I hope it was fun for [the students], and it was really fun for me. It was the most fun I had all year,” Pryor said.

Pryor and composer Emily Alberici worked with the Pathway students who adapted the novel during the school year to turn The Alice Express into a separate production — a musical, appropriately titled “Alice Express: The Musical.” It will be performed by Pathway students in August.

“Making this play was very cool,” Aronde Smith, of Philadelphia, a Pathways upper school student who worked on both the play and the musical, said in an email from Pryor. “We made up the characters in our own way. I am excited that Hedgerow Theatre is doing a play that we wrote.

“My favorite part of this experience is learning the new songs and playing the funny characters. My other favorite part is that we get to see the professional cast perform it at Hedgerow,” Smith related.

Smith was part of a team that also included Jaleeia Thomas, Marquan White, and Lauryn McMillan.

Many students in other schools participate in school plays, so it’s a plus that these students can have that experience as well. Creating and rehearsing a play stretches them, a special benefit for these students, their teacher said.

“A lot of our students have a specific learning disability,” Pryor said. “They have a difficulty processing reading and writing.”

The songs help them remember the lines; the lines help them remember the songs. “It’s high-order thinking and it’s fantastic that it’s all happening while you are having fun. It’s so beneficial,” said Pryor.

As for the plot, Pryor has come to admire “Alice’s ability to accept all the obstacles and whatever comes her way. It’s a little bit like us in the past couple of years with everything that happened. She’s stalwart.

“That ability the little girl has is emblematic in the story,” he said, and it’s emblematic with Pathway’s students as well. “They all have a lot going on in their lives.”

“The Alice Express,” July 30-Aug. 14, Hedgerow Theatre Company, at the Hedgerow Farmhouse, 146 W. Rose Valley Rd., Rose Valley. Bring a chair/blanket to professional outdoor performances on Saturdays at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. and Sundays at 1 p.m. 610-565-4211 or hedgerowtheatre.org. Student performances of “Alice Express: The Musical”: Aug. 4 and 5 at 10 a.m. and 10:45 a.m. both days at Haya Ground Studio, 132 W. Main St., rear, Norristown, pathwayschool.org

The Shakespeare in Clark Park folks are treating us to an interesting mash-up of two plays this week — a theatrical debate in dueling plays over women’s rights and societal roles staged in the late 1500s and early 1600s. William Shakespeare wrote one and playwright John Fletcher replied with a rebuttal work.

“The Taming!” joins Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew” and Fletcher’s “The Woman’s Prize,” or “The Tamer Tam’d.”

Shakespeare penned “The Taming of the Shrew” in the late 1500s. Feisty Katherina, whose reputation for speaking up makes her unmarriageable, is delaying the nuptials of her younger, prettier, and more compliant sister, Bianca. Petruchio, motivated by money to marry into the sisters’ wealthy family, woos Katherina and famously tames the shrew, as Katherina is known. Scholars and English lit students debate whether Katherina, aka Kate, is actually tamed, or whether she falls in love and willingly abets Petruchio in his get-rich scheme. Either way, the play’s title sets up one side of the argument.

In Fletcher’s revenge play, written 15 years later, Petruchio has remarried after Katherina’s death. He vows to be even firmer with his second wife, Maria. She vows to defeat him. Fletcher states his aim in the play’s epilogue: “To teach both Sexes due equality.”

“We couldn’t stage The Taming of the Shrew without talking back to it! Fletcher’s play, written 15 years after Shrew, is an Elizabethan clapback, and we’re putting our West Philly spin on it!” the group promises.

Act 1, directed by Kathryn MacMillan, focuses on The Taming of the Shrew. In Act 2, Ang Bey directs The Tamer Tamed, which was adapted by Charlotte Northeast and West Philadelphia community members.

July 27-31, Clark Park, 43rd and Baltimore Streets, Philadelphia. Rain location: The Prince Theater in the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, 3680 Walnut St., Philadelphia. Free, but reservations are suggested so attendees can be informed if the show moves indoors. Shakespeareinclarkpark.org

After 50 years of marriage, Bill and Nancy serenely decide to divorce during a quiet dinner for two. Their adult sons are not quite as serene and descend on the Grand Horizons senior living community to intervene. New York reviewers described playwright Bess Wohl’s 2020 Tony-nominated comedy as “laugh-packed” and “deceptively insightful.” “Grand Horizons” caps the season for People’s Light. Directed by Jackson Gay.

Aug. 3-28, People’s Light, 39 Conestoga Rd., Malvern, 610-644-3500 or peopleslight.org

There’s still time to catch the final shows of Storybook Musical Theatre’s production of “The Little Mermaid,” staged at the Gratz College’s theater. Patricia Goldberg wrote this adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen classic. Music and lyrics by Jeff Reim.

Through July 30, Storybook Musical Theatre at the theater on the Gratz College campus, 7605 Old York Rd., Melrose Park, 215-659-8550 or storybookmusical.org

Check with individual venues for COVID-19 protocols.

janevonbtheater@gmail.com