The design team met for the first time this week! We’re a mix of Auditorium staff, community colleagues, previous Youth Theatre students (now graduated and out in the world), and current William Penn students.
Did you know that to acquire the production rights from the Playwrights Guild of Canada, we had to be considered a professional theatre?
Since we’ve got a full-time staff, all members of the production team are getting paid, and each element of production has its budget line, we were able to qualify and gain rights to the production.
Getting that right mouthfeel…
With the Youth Theatre, we teach that originality should be valued over replication. Wanting to produce The Hobbit comes from a long love and passion for J.R.R Tolkien’s works. That said, we aren’t out to remake anything you’ve seen on screen or stage before. We’ve developed a sacred text to guide us to something that feels like it belongs to Tolkien’s world but will only ever be seen on our stage, with this cast and crew. Everything we’re working on is starting at three main elements:
- We are not replicating Peter Jackson’s works.
- We are not beholden to Tolkien purists but do take into account his original inspirations and reference points.
- We subscribe to Tolkien’s idea of a Faerie Story.
Finally, we developed an intention of mouthfeel. When you take this show in, we want you to feel something tangible.
This will be a Tolkien Faerie story with bioluminescent abyssal thrills.