Clara and the Nutcracker - an immersive and inclusive retelling by Claudia Haas
This is a "treatment" and an 8 page read. Looking for development. The pantomime/dance would run about an hour. Created by award-winning playwright Sandra Fenichel Asher and me, we sought to find new ways to tell a classic story that is for all populations. After rereading E.T.A. Hiofman's story, we think Hoffman would approve.
PLAYWRIGHTS' NOTE: In his original story, "...
This is a "treatment" and an 8 page read. Looking for development. The pantomime/dance would run about an hour. Created by award-winning playwright Sandra Fenichel Asher and me, we sought to find new ways to tell a classic story that is for all populations. After rereading E.T.A. Hiofman's story, we think Hoffman would approve.
PLAYWRIGHTS' NOTE: In his original story, "Nutcracker and Mouse King," E.T.A. Hoffman speaks of "a land where you can still see . . . the most splendid and most wondrous things, if you only have the right eyes to see them with." It was his intention to inspire all children to develop and maintain those "right eyes" by using their imaginations as fully as possible. HIs emphasis was on "all children." All adults, too. Indeed, the fabulous utopia he creates includes "Greeks and Armenians, Jews and Tyroleans, officers and soldiers and preachers and shepherds and buffoons -- in short: every kind of person to be found in the entire world." (His world at the time.) He was a man way ahead of his time. (Written in 1816.)
This is not your grandmother's "The Nutcracker Ballet," generally performed by slender, classically-trained, young, white ballerinas and danseurs. The intention of this dance/theatre piece is to bring Hoffman's noble ideals into our own time by setting it in the twenty-first century (and imagined places) and offering opportunities for productions to be as all-inclusive as possible, leaving open to each company decisions about dance styles; music choices; performers of various abilities, ages, shapes, sizes, genders, and cultures; and the possible inclusion of audience members.
We see Hoffman's "thousands . . . raising the merry uproar" as diverse performers contributing to the beauty and joy of the dances while riding on shoulders, twirling in wheelchairs and in any other way they can, be it in the Party Scene, the Battle Scene, the Snowflake Ballet, the international scenes, and/or the Waltz of the Flowers. As a non-verbal piece, we also offer inclusion to audience members with hearing impairment and those for whom English is not a first language. There are also optional possibilities for full immersion of the audience. Inclusive pre-and-post show activities are encouraged.