Performance Preview Guide For Once On This Island

Performance Preview Guide for Once on This Island

Performances: January 11th – 20th at First Stage Theatre, 120 Front Street North, Issaquah.

Patrons have different ideas of what material or themes are appropriate for them and their families. For this reason, we provide the following information:

The Production  Once on This Island may not be suitable for children ages 10 and under.  Once on This Island is based on the cultural, religious and racial divisions found in Haiti between the ruling class and the rural peasants. It reflects the core ideas of prejudice and the separation of people because of their differences.  Once on This Island also explores the power of love over death and whether love and life can survive when faced with great adversity.

Versions available to preview: A script is available at the Francis J. Gaudette Theatre Box Office in Issaquah for you to read.

Production length: The show will run approximately 90 minutes without an intermission.

Synopsis: This story follows the journey of a young girl, Ti Moune, who is orphaned by a storm and taken in by a peasant family on an island with strong divisions between its ruling and peasant class. As she grows she longs for more, for a stranger to come and take her away to a better life. Throughout her story the Gods of Earth, Water, Love and Death watch and help shape what is to become of young Ti Moune when she finally gets the opportunity she had hoped for. The energetic, contemporary music by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty (the team of Seussical and the animated film Anastasia) breathes life into the production with songs such as We Dance, Waiting for Life, and A Part of Us.

Educational Content: Once on This Island is a one-act musical with a book and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens and music by Stephen Flaherty. Based on the novel “My Love, My Love” by Rosa Guy, the musical is a retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's “The Little Mermaid’ set in the French Antilles in the Caribbean Sea. The show also includes elements of the “Romeo and Juliet” story. Script Content Details Please note: the following contains plot spoilers.

Violence: A young man crashes in a car accident and lies unconscious. Peasants thinking the young man left for dead say the line: He has what he deserves. Peasants sing the line: The Gods are out for blood, they’ve been cheated of their kill, in reference to Ti Moune’s nurturing the man back to life. A brief battle is referenced in the text and is stylistically depicted on stage. Storytellers spit at a character in disgust. The God of Death gives a character a knife and a scene ensues in which she must chose to take her life or someone else’s. She ultimately throws the knife down after raising it to strike against someone. A character’s death is stylistically depicted through dance.

Sexual Content: Storytellers relate to how a ruling class man took his pleasure with peasant girls. A female character climbs to a man’s window and later the two hold each other as characters sing around them. They embrace and ultimately lie down together. Storytellers reference them as lovers saying: she slept in his room, and a peasant as a lover. A father says to his son: you are not the first to want a peasant. I too know their appeal… An upper class citizen says of a young woman in a song lyric: probably makes him rise like yeast, and later, they’ll never stand before a priest.

Language: References to class status in a prejudiced manner are central to the play and strong in content but are mild in language.

Substances:  Alcohol: There is a brief reference to upper class drinking champagne.

Other: Racial references in the text are being substituted for class division text in order to facilitate racial-neutral casting. Strong class division and prejudice are depicted and are central themes. Family ties are broken when a son of a ruling class man and peasant woman drives his father from the island in a war.