ARTICLES
TONY
Kids, posted
June 2, 2004
Add
some spice, girl! Precocious children are always on the
menu when a witch is cooking, and Baba Yaga is certainly
looking forward
to her
dinner tonight. But she hasn't been counting on the
resilience
of her main ingredient. A contemporary retelling
of an old
Russian folk tale, The Adventures of Baba Yaga: Little
Girl Stew is the story of a young girl named Vassilissa
whose
evil stepmother sends her out into the dark forest
to fetch some
light from the evil Baba Yaga. When Vassilissa arrives
at Baba Yaga's house, the old woman promptly captures
her and forces
her to complete a myriad of tasks—or be turned
into stew. Baba Yaga marks Messenger Theatre Company's
first foray
into children's theater, and according to co-artistic
director Emily Davis, it was a natural progression. "We
were mounting mostly mythological stories, and Baba
Yaga has many
of the
same archetypal elements and characters," she
says. In addition, Baba Yaga is filled with surreal
imagery—the
witch flies around in a mortar and pestle, and lives
in a house that walks around on chicken legs—that
could only be realized through huge masks and shadow
puppets, which
are Messenger
Theatre Company's specialty. "Puppets and masks
are perfect for children," Davis says. "They
know exactly who someone is by the way their face
is made." Davis
and her company cofounders—co-artistic director
Shannon Harvey and producer Agathe David-Weill—were
also attracted to the tale's feminist undertones. "Usually,
it's a boy who has to go out on an adventure to gain
a sense of power," Davis says. "This is
one of the few stories where a girl gets to go on
a hero's journey instead
of it being
about her getting married in the end." Then
again, in a world where houses walk and witches get
around
on kitchen
tools... Ages 6 and up.
-
Raven Snook
Read
the FABULOUS New York Times article about us from Laurel
Graeber, September 24th, 2004 HERE
Read about the beginnings of Messenger Theatre Company
in the Sarah Lawrence
Alumni Magazine
An article commissioned by Voices Magazine on the Lysistrata
rap
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