Show goes on at the Everyman with innovative version of children's classic
Deirdre Dwyer has adapted The Snow Queen, by Hans Christian Anderson.
The Everyman in Cork is bringing the theatre to children in a whole new way this Christmas, with a novel version of Hans Christian Anderson’s The Snow Queen.
The fairytale has been brought to life in many ways over the years, but director Deirdre Dwyer will be the first to present it to children through headsets and illustrated postcards.
Dwyer originally planned to showcase her contemporary Irish version of The Snow Queen at the Garter Lane Art Centre in her native Waterford, where she is artist-in-residence. Of course, that was before the pandemic hit.
Dwyer is also a member of the BrokenCrow theatre company, which is resident at the Everyman in Cork. She knew that the play couldn’t be staged at the Everyman because of panto season, but never thought that it wouldn’t see the stage at all.
“I was involved in a project in the summer where we did everything by the book but the rules changed suddenly at the end and we were forced to bring our outdoor show indoors to stream it,” Dwyer explains.
“I had been thinking we could do a drive-in for The Snow Queen or put it behind a window, but that experience in the summer made me really determined to make it Covid-proof.”
She was soon inspired by all of the podcasts she’s been listening to while out walking and came up with the idea to create an eight-part audio adaption of the play instead.
Inspiration also came after reading about a British theatre company that sent storytelling postcards to ticket holders during lockdown. She decided to commission eight Irish artists to illustrate a unique card for each episode of The Snow Queen in order to help children visualise the story.
“I was trying to figure out how it might be possible to engage children through audio, while also giving them something physical,” Dwyer explains.
Families will be sent the package of postcards when they buy their tickets and the kids can open each card as the episodes are released.
“Hopefully, it’s a bit like the anticipation of opening the door of an advent calendar,” Dwyer says. “The audio should give space for the visual to come into the imagination and then the different styles on each card will allow the brain to produce different kinds of pictures. So, hopefully, children will be engaged as the story unfurls in front of them.”
The Snow Queen tells the story of two friends who end up in trouble in a dangerous, wintery landscape. In the original version, Gerda must rescue her friend Kai from the queen’s clutches. In Dwyer’s version, our heroes are Grainne and Caoimhin.
“The story is so strange but it was the ideas and the visual pictures that always stayed with me after I read it as a child,” Dwyer says. “It also really appealed to me because it’s a graphic gender flip. Usually, in fairytales, the princess gets kidnapped and the prince has to go rescue her, but Anderson flipped it and Gerda has to rescue Kai instead.”
Dwyer is hoping that the price of the package, €15, will make it accessible to a wide demographic and that the whole family will enjoy the series. With the help of a friend and primary school teacher, Karen Kelliher, she also created a special package for teachers that includes 18 different classroom activities based on the series (50€).
Dwyer says that the fact all of her independent work has been based on stories she read as a child just goes to show the magic of fairytales.
“It shows the power of reading children’s books,” she says. “The things that I read as a child really stuck with me so much.” She hopes that this creative way of showcasing The Snow Queen will allow the story to stick with others too.
