Choreographing this show has been a pleasure. Please come support these wonderful actors! The post gave me some love in the article....
Article
Finding a New Way to Tell a Familiar Tale
By Eve ZibartWashington Post Staff Writer Friday, March 28, 2008; Page WE31
When Round House Theatre's artistic director, Blake Robison, decided to produce "Lord of the Flies," William Golding's grim story of English schoolboys marooned on an island and their descent into barbarity, he faced two questions, one philosophical and one practical.
First: Why do this story now? And: How to make the story not too violent, but violent enough?
The book is purportedly set during World War II, when many British children were sent away to avoid the German bombings. The story, however, is not time-specific. "It operates in a metaphorical time frame," Robison explains. "The simple answer is that it's still very relevant. Violence is still going on all around us. There are daily abominations against humanity. The issue is treating the murders in a way that seems vital and meaningful to a ninth-grader."
Robison puzzled over "how to make it frightful enough, given what teenagers see on TV every day. How do we compete with the gruesome stuff on CNN or movies? Obviously not with limbs flying or blood dripping," he says.
He knew that no purely literary adaptation would likely grip the imagination of high school students required to read the book. So Robison lit on the idea of expressing the boys' savagery through modern dance and setting it to the music teenagers identify with: Linkin Park, Beastie Boys, Rage Against the Machine, Beck and Tool. The moments when the boys act out their relationships physically -- first in a seemingly friendly rugby match, then in arguments escalating to full-scale fighting and eventually to murder -- have been transformed by choreographer Kelly Mayfield into vivid and eerie dance numbers. These numbers, or "zones," as Robison calls them, are all the more shocking when the violence shifts to slow-motion, and audience members unconsciously hold their breath.
"It's absolutely shocking in its own way," Robison says. "It's not splatter violence, but it has a visceral power." The familiarity of the music perversely adds to the audience's emotional discomfort.
The actors are in their late teens and early 20s, and all but one are local. They began rehearsals with dance stretches and improvisational interaction. To add to the scenes' punch, so to speak, Robison also invited fight choreographer Monalisa Arias to work with Mayfield.
In keeping with the style of the production, the set is evocative but semi-abstract, with the suggestion of a crashed airplane wing angling across the stage. The most realistic part of the production is the costumes: Robison decided to stick with traditional British school uniforms because, when he started doing research, he discovered that those outfits haven't changed much since the 1940s. To inspire the actors, a montage of old and new photos of British schoolboys are pinned to a green room wall alongside pictures of various indigenous tribes that look as if they came from old National Geographic magazines and newsreels.
"Once they start to lose their shirts and paint themselves, they take on a quite different look," Robison says. "There's a lot of undressing going on. It's sort of like a music video, very cool."
Lord of the Flies Round House Theatre, 4545 East West Hwy., Bethesda. 240-644-1100. Wednesday-April 27. $25-$60.
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