May 8 – May 17, 2009
By Frances Hodgson Burnett
Adapted by June Walker Rogers
Produced by special arrangement with THE DRAMATIC PUBLISHING
COMPANY of Woodstock, Illinois
Directed by Kelly Herman
This classic and heartwarming story revolves around Sara Crewe, a young girl born in London but raised in India by her world-traveling father. One day Sara’s father is made bankrupt, and she is reduced from enormous wealth to terrible poverty. At Miss Minchin’s school, where she had been a privileged student, she is now forced to work as a servant. But Sara has a loving heart and a quick imagination, and she knows that with the right spirit she can remain a princess inside. Suitable for ages 5 and up.
“The plot of A Little Princess is always a timely one: young girls dealing with huge issues of death of loved ones, loss of personal freedoms, and their strength in overcoming the uncertainty of their futures,” said director Kelly Herman. “My concept for staging A Little Princess is the merging of two entirely separate worlds, India and London, at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. India, the world Sara Crewe comes from, has rich color saturation and texture; it is a world that feeds the imagination. London, the world that Sara enters and Miss Minchin controls, is monochromatic cold and austere. It is a place where imagination becomes a means of survival.”
Frances Hodgson Burnett was born in London in November 1849, and at age five moved with her family to Knoxville, Texas. After losing both parents before she was 18, Burnett began writing to help support her siblings. Little Lord Fauntleroy was her first successful novel, selling over half a million copies. Published in 1886, the novel was meant to be a children’s book, but had great appeal to mothers. A Little Princess was originally written as a novella for St. Nicholas Magazine in 1888. Expanding upon the life of Sara Crewe, Burnett published the full novel in 1905. In 1911, she published what has become her most well known work, A Secret Garden. Burnett died in New York in 1924.
Kelly Herman (Director) is Associate Director of Youth Theatre, Education and Outreach for The Laguna Playhouse. An accomplished actress, educator and director, Kelly has a Master of Fine Arts from the Actor’s Training Program at Rutgers University and a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre from California State University, Long Beach. She has acquired a multitude of tools that have allowed her to perform, direct and educate extensively on the east and west coasts. Kelly has been involved with Laguna Playhouse’s TheatreReach for the last nine years, and has been teaching in the Conservatory and Repertory program in the Youth Theatre for seven years.
About The Laguna Playhouse Youth Theatre: Since its early days, The Laguna Playhouse recognized the value of offering plays for young audiences. In the 1980s, what had been a sporadic history of producing children’s theatre was transformed into a formal program called The Laguna Playhouse Youth Theatre. The current program offers a two play subscription series of plays and musicals based upon popular books or stories aimed primarily for children of elementary and middle school ages.
What makes the Laguna Playhouse Youth Theatre Season unique in the region: the plays are directed and designed by theatre professionals and are fully-mounted with the Playhouse’s technical resources. The staff for each production is drawn principally from the Playhouse’s Youth Conservatory Program. Open casting is “age-appropriate,” which means that young people play young people in the plays. The content of the plays is typically similar to G-rated or PG-rated films.
