Tickets: $11 for children and seniors, and $15 for adults. Discount tickets are available for groups of 12 or more.
Contact and tickets:
952- 979-1111 or www.stagestheatre.org.
By Ed Huyck
Sometimes, getting what you want offers up a whole fresh set of challenges. That's certainly true for Jennifer Kirkeby and Shirley Mier, who got the enviable - and daunting - task of adapting Jan Brett's "The Mitten" for Stages Theatre in Hopkins.
Stages' Artistic Director Sandy Boren-Barrett wanted to adapt the show but was down to the wire for the rights for the book.
"The season literally had to be out by 5 p.m. and we were still working on the rights for this one," Kirkeby said. "At five minutes to five, Sandy called again, got connected to the right person and we had the show."
Of course, it fell to the creators to come up with a script and music for the show - one that was sure to be a hit with the legions of young fans of the book.
"The Mitten" marks the third time Kirkeby and Mier have worked together on a show at Stages, though its creation followed a different path than past collaborations.
Director Boren-Barrett wanted the musical ideas explored before the script was written, so Mier started the process.
The picture book tells a simple story. A young boy asks his grandmother to knit him white mittens.
While playing outside, he loses one of the mittens in the snow, and it becomes a home for a string of woodland animals.
"It's based on a Ukrainian folk tale, so I started by researching Ukrainian music," Mier said. "We also wanted to give it a bit of a 'Peter and the Wolf' feel."
Sergei Prokofiev's classic children's tale turned out to have a deeper connection. "Prokofiev spent time in the Ukraine, so we had this great connection," Mier said.
Mier sat down and composed the opening musical piece for the show and then started to tackle themes for each of the animals. So, the jumpy rabbit has a pizzicato-style theme, while a clarinet represents the mole.
Meanwhile, Kirkeby needed to wait. "The process was so completely different. It felt like we were doing it backwards," she said, admitting that she did write poetry and other background information while Mier worked on the music.
Once the musical foundation was set, Kirkeby joined the process, writing lyrics for the songs and the script for the show. It wasn't a case of the two working independently, however. They would often "leapfrog" the show to each other, working back and forth to move from their individual ideas to a shared vision.
They often would collaborate together, huddled around Mier's computer to work on the compositions.
"The music has the 'look' of the book - it's rich in detail and orchestration and it has traditional sounds," Mier said.
They did make some changes along the way, including adding a host of snow fairies - dancers who help to set the scene and act as a chorus for the action.
All the time, the two were aware of how popular the source material was and how important it was to keep to the original vision of Brett's story.
"We've kept it true to Jan Brett's book. We know the audience will know the story," Kirkeby said. "We hope that they will get sucked into our adaptation - that they get lost in the story again."
