April 13, 2011
Fairy tales are at center of drama schools ‘Secret in the Wings
The lesser-known European fairy tales are in the spotlight as the UW School of Drama presents its production of Secret in the Wings, by Mary Zimmerman. Guest director Julie Beckman brings the play to the Meany Studio Theatre, beginning with previews April 17 and 19; the production runs through Sunday, May 1. The play showcases School of Drama undergraduate actors.
Combined in fragments, the fairy tales of Secret in the Wings reveal a world of primeval fears, emotions and desires. A frightened little girl pleads with her callous parents not to leave her at home with the neighbor next door. “He’s got a tail!” she exclaims. This “Ogre” and storyteller becomes her guide and ours, distracting us with tales marvelous and cruel, pausing only to pose the question, “Will you marry me?” With striking imagery and a contemporary, comic edge, stories flow together to create a vivid fantasy world inspiring fear, wonder, and finally a strange resolution.
Beckman perceives the play as “raw material” which relies on the collaborative efforts of the ensemble artists to create its finished form.
“Secret in the Wings is so powerful because the Grimm fairy tales at the center of the play are strangely familiar and also strangely new,” she said. “The stories have withstood the test of time because they utilize images that are deep within our subconscious, images that come up in our dreams and nightmares, images that also have startling resonance in our waking lives. Mary Zimmerman’s text uses the stories as a framework which allows rehearsal to be a dynamic process of exploration and discovery . . . we find ways to use the unique theatricality of this place, this group of people and this moment in time.”
Zimmerman herself has called the setting “some strange place balanced between a basement and a forest,” a dark emptiness we are continually trying to fill by imagining a better place where “good triumphs and the wicked are defeated.” To her, this darkness is also an essential source of the creative drive. Secret in the Wings challenges us to enter a childs imagination where fiction is just as real, time is malleable and events may layer one on another in an overlapping series.
Zimmerman is an American director known for her adaptations of classic works of literature. She is a faculty member in the department of performance studies at Northwestern University. She also was a member of Lookingglass Theatre, in Chicago and artistic associate of the Goodman Theatre in Chicago and the Seattle Repertory Theatre. She has received numerous national and international awards, among them a 1998 “genius” grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and a 2002 Tony Award for Best Direction for Metamorphoses.
Beckman is a freelance director, educator and adapter in the Seattle area. Her 2009 production of The Elephant Man with Strawberry Theatre Workshop received five Seattle Gregory Award nominations including Outstanding Director and was also named best production of 2009 by Seattle Gay News. She has directed and adapted for Book-It Repertory Theatre (Hard Times, Jane Eyre and Waxwings), and Stone Soup Theatre (Five x Tenn and Trilogy of Terror). She also recently directed staged readings of The Bells by Theresa Rebeck at Intiman and T or C by Vince Delaney at Seattle Rep.
Tickets for Secret in the Wings are $10 for previews, $17 for Friday and Saturday evenings and $15 for all other performances. They are available at the UW Arts Ticket Office or online.
