In theatre teacher Kayla Sharp’s version of Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, Alice doesn’t pass through a looking glass at all. Instead, she wakes up in a dream world on a chessboard. If Alice can make it to the other side, she will be “queened.”
This year’s fall play, Queening Alice, is written by Sharp and debuted this weekend, Nov. 3-5. According to Sharp, whose father has been telling her to write a play for years, her inspiration came from two places.
“I went to the M.C. Escher exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of Art and it was so brilliant,” Sharp said. “I just found it fascinating. I went back three times because I was so intrigued. He had all the rules and then he broke all the rules…. The other thing that aligned was that I listened to this podcast. The podcast is the History Chicks… they do all these different histories of famous women… and every season they do one person who’s fictional. So they were talking about the real life Alice that Lewis Carroll knew and wrote about…. They were talking about [Carroll’s] wordplay and I had just seen the Escher exhibit and I was like, ‘This would blend so perfect together with Escher’s style.’”
Though Sharp based her ideas for the play on rule-breaking, other adaptations she read took this too far, blending the stories of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.
“There’s so many different adaptations but none of them were correct,” Sharp said. “They would always mix the stories together…. Mixing those worlds is totally not [Carroll’s] vision, and it bothered me…. How can you have a playing card on a chessboard?”
Despite this, Sharp is looking forward to the flexibility that she will be granted as the simultaneous writer and director.
“I am able to adapt,” Sharp said. “I don’t have to worry about copyright. I don’t have to worry about distorting another writer’s image.”
Senior Carmyn Johnson, who played Rosie in last year’s spring musical, The Wedding Singer, has never been in a play before. She will play the role of Alice.
“[I’m most excited about] being able to fit my personality into the play,” Johnson said. “I’m really hoping [Sharp] lets me wear my hair big, do my own thing and still be Alice.”
Sophomore Grace Lake, who was cast as a unicorn and a flower, is excited to see Johnson taking on the lead.
“The costumes are going to be really cool,”
Lake said. “Everyone’s so good at acting, especially Carmyn, who’s playing Alice. The set and everything should be really exciting.”
Lake compares her preparation for the play to her experience as Julia in The Wedding Singer.
“It’s a lot different for me because there were a lot more rehearsals for the musical, and for the play, you memorize on your own and you come back and you put it together,” Lake said. “With the musical there are a lot of different things you have to do as a group.”
According to senior Edward Austin, a lion and a flower in Queening Alice, another factor that changes the approach of the actors is the fact that this play is an adaptation.
“I’m more used to being able to go off of the thing because I’ve seen it before, but since this is her adaptation of it, it’s more like I have to listen to what [Sharp] says,” Austin said. “It’s more on us as well, because we make the play itself.”
Senior Christopher Cotten, who plays the White King, believes that the play is set up for success.
“I think it will be better [than previous productions],” Cotton said. “I think this year we had more auditions than any other year, and I think we have a lot of good talent that’s going to come together really nicely.”
According to Sharp, the performance will be family-friendly.
“This is going to be a children’s play that is intriguing for adults,” Sharp said. “It’s got a lot of clever wordplay that is in the book as well, so you don’t have to be a child to enjoy it.”
– By Sara Heilman
