To Jim Henson – whose 75th birthday would have been today – Thank You for making me believe frogs can talk, Fraggles live under the ground, pigs look good in pearls, female Gelflings can fly, and in Gonzo – whatever he is. Without you my own imagination would not be so brave! :)
Avoid the eyes
Take no fruit offered
Learn from the wolf that howls
All is an echo of your own voice
Never to be born to the sun
They are but shades of themselves in the Underworld
And are unable to hold memory or time
Recently, I had the wonderful opportunity to adapt and direct Neil Gaiman’s short story, “Snow, Glass, Apples” for the theater. I staged it outdoors in a farmer’s market and invited the audience to walk into the tale, literally. For all my far away friends who couldn’t make it to the show (we sold out the run!) – I’d like to bring you on the journey now with a few photos from the production.
“Snow, Glass, Apples” is Gaiman’s retelling of the tale of Snow White told from the stepmother’s point of view. It turns the tale upside down, gives the princess vampire-like attributes, and speaks to the grave consequences of mistrusting your own instincts. You can read several press articles – which include more of my thoughts on the story and adaptation, and see more photos on the website at: www.InByTheEye.com/SnowGlassApples.html
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“Snow, Glass, Apples” is a very intimate short story, and I didn’t want to lose that intimacy in production by confining it to a stage and asking my actors to play to ”one wall”. So I invited the audience members to walk onto the stage and stand side by side with the actors, walk into the tale to hear their whispers, and catch glimpses of their face expressions as they were turning away from one another. And it worked! I was so happy to see the audience grasp the idea immediately, and walk around the set like it was a perfectly natural way to observe a play.
This tale isn’t for the faint of heart, therefore, I wanted to open the story with the Huntsman killing the Princess. It was shocking and 
brutal and sprayed everyone with a lot of blood. But the audience knew from the get-go that this wasn’t a placid fairy tale. I put them on guard and thrust them into a world where nothing is as it seems. So, how do you cut someone’s heart out and make it frightening when your audience is literally standing over your shoulder? The success of this scene really came from the actors playing the Huntsman and the Princess (Rod Lindsey and Carrie Anne Hunt). They were fearless with the physical and emotional struggles, and by the time Rod actually pulled the bloody ”heart” out and stumbled away from the Princess, the audience was pretty raw. Theater is a live art, I don’t think you should fall alseep in your seat. :)
(above – the audience watches as the Princess is killed before them) 
Another iconic moment in the short story is the poisoning of the apple. If there’s one image that everyone knows from Snow White – it’s the apple. In the short story Gaiman takes such care to describe exactly how, step by step, the queen poisons the apple. She is taking matters into her own hands (after the Princess has come back to life), she’s doing what she knows how to do, to protect her kingdom. When I read this passage in the story, it was so haunting and detailed, I felt like I was seeing this moment for the first time again. I wanted to do that for the audience, take what they were expecting conventionally and heighten it. I had considered doing it in slow motion, or through dance, but instead - my “Forest Chorus” was born… In fairy tales, the forest is a character unto itself. So, I wanted to bring it to life in this play. Three dancers took on the form of a traditional 
Greek chorus, commentating on each scene, not through epic poetry, but through movement. They represented the forest, which held no loyalties to any character, only themselves. They watched, sometimes helped, sometimes hindered, but ultimately saught something from each character that would benefit the forest. In this case it was usually blood – a symbol of life and death, the Princess’ demise and rebirth.
Each night, I was delighted when Victoria Hay (who played the queen) would set her instruments down on the table and begin to cast her spell over the apple. The audience would close in around her and watch each move, each pin prick and vial drop, as if remembering for later. I really love the character of the Queen that Gaiman has created. She is flawed and brave. Like all of us, she has regrets and makes mistakes, and yet maintains her integrity in the face of adversity. And I was thrilled to work with Victoria again, who took us all on this heartbreaking journey, one unraveling to a frightening, unforgiving place, and she did so in such a way that you couldn’t look away.
With the adapatation I tried to be faithful and use as much of Gaiman’s original material as possible. The place where I did the most writing was in the Prince’s Tale – another iconic figure, which Gaiman turns upside down. This character is a look back at the oft sexually shocking nature of early fairy tales. To say that he likes “dead girls” is an understatement. 
In traditional fairy tales the prince is somewhat of a thankless character. He comes in at the end and saves the princess from some peril, but has no story of his own. Gaiman changes that, he gives you a prince with his own needs and his own secrets. We played this out in a series of tableaus which saw the Prince (played by Josh Henry) move from the Monk to the Queen, the Forest, the Princess on his way to fulfilling his own twisted needs. And only by default does he affect the outcome of the Queen’s story, by dislodging the apple from the Princess’ throat and bringing her back to life again.
It’s a difficult tale to tell. It shows you a side of yourself you may not want to admit to, one of failure and regret – but there’s a lot of nobility in that too. I asked a lot of my actors, the audience and myself with this play. We tried things we’d never done before and took a lot of risks. But to me that’s what fairy tales are all about – taking chances. I think the Lord of the Fair (played by Jay Peterson) summed it up best at the beginning of the play when he said “Ladies and gentlemen, if you’ve left your reservations behind and brought your courage with you, then enter into the marketplace – and Welcome!”
