Lyric Novel to Lyric Stage - An Amusing Circumstance

I happened to get a last minute ticket to this presentation during the English Department Senior Farewell gathering. I sat next to department chair Gavin Jones and we chatted about the department and general life subjects. Neither of us had any expectations for this (play? reading? presentation? something?) and I was very excited to see what was going to happen.

The play/reading started out with a small video introduction from the novel's author. He gave the premise of the show, which was to highlight the challenges and outcome of turning a lyrical novel into a musical play. Then the director of the play and four readers took the stage. The director gave humorous presentations about what was difficult during the translation, which parts he thought were particularly important to translate correctly, and parts where he took creative license to do what he wanted to achieve the proper affect. The readers would take turns reading sections that the director spoke about. They read well and had good voices. After the readings they would show parts of the play on screen. That was probably the best part, seeing the professional actors act out the novel.

The process that the director talked about was very interesting and all the problems he stated made sense. When do you add more or less emphasis and/or emotion to a scene? What about times when the novel is less explicit? What do you do then? The novel ends with a letter, but the play ends a scene after which the director included and wrote himself. I liked how he was able to take creative license and end the novel in a completely different way and the experience as a whole shed light on taking a novel and giving it more visual effects.