STUDY GUIDE Prepared by Production Dramaturg Kimberly Colburn James and the Giant Peach • SOUTH COAST REPERTORY •1 TABLE OF CONTENTS PART I: THE PLAY 2..........The Characters 2..........The Story 3 ..........Going by the Book: An Excerpt from James and the Giant Peach 4 .........Meet the Author: Roald Dahl 4 .........Interview with Roald Dahl 5 .........Meet the Playwright: David Wood 6 .........From Book to Play PART II: CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES BEFORE THE SHOW 8 ..... Questions for Discussion 8 ..... Words, Words, Words! A Vocabulary Game AFTER THE SHOW 9 ..... Discussion About the Theatre 9 ..... Discussion About the Play 10 ... Activities PART III: AT THE THEATRE 11 ......... Welcome to the Argyros 11 ......... Theatre Etiquette 11 ......... Student Tips for Theatre Trips 11 ......... Programs PART IV: EDUCATION STATION 12 ........California Visual and Performing Arts Framework 13 ........Five Strands of Art Education 14 .......Basic Theatre Vocabulary PART V: RESOURCES 16 ........Children’s Books by Roald Dahl 16 ........Web Links 2 • SOUTH COAST REPERTORY • James and the Giant Peach Part I: The Play THE CHARACTERS (as listed in David Wood’s adaptation) • James: our young hero; from a downtrodden, The other characters they play within the story are: lonely child he develops into a brave “captain” of • Mr. Trotter the insect band • Mrs. Trotter • Rhinoceros • Old-Green-Grasshopper: elderly, genial, courteous, • Aunt Sponge avuncular, musical (he plays the violin); he helps • Aunt Spiker narrate • Old Man • TV Reporter • Miss Spider: occasionally sharp, even a little sinis- • Captain of the Queen Mary ter, but ultimately kind; her marathon thread spin- • First Officer ning to help save the peach is truly heroic. • Second Officer • Tourists, Visitors, Sharks, Seagulls, Fishes, New • Centipede: a sparky, cocky, warm-hearted Jack-the- York Citizens lad • Ladybug: posh though not prissy, pretty though not vain, volatile though level-headed • Earthworm: not only blind, but a pessimist, a doom merchant whose standing in the group and whose self-esteem improves no end, thanks to James THE STORY he hero of our story is James Henry Trotter—a lonely nine-year-old orphan who has lived with his ghastly aunties, Sponge and Spiker, ever since his parents met their fate in the mouth of a rampaging rhinoceros. These crotchety old crones make poor James slave for them and never let him play with other children. One day, a mysteri- ous stranger presents him with a bag of glowing green croco- Tdile tongues—the strongest magic the world has ever known. When he accidentally spills them on the ground near the barren peach tree in his yard, the most marvel- ous things start to happen. First, a luscious ripe peach suddenly appears on the shriveled-up tree and starts growing and growing till it’s as big as a house. Then, just as James is trying to sneak a quick bite, he discovers a tunnel leading right into the center of the fruit, where he encounters a cadre of kid-sized insects who become his instant friends: cocky Centipede, grumpy Earthworm, musical Grasshopper, fashionable Ladybird, and indus- trious Spider. To escape his evil aunts, they snip the stem and the giant peach starts rolling away on a fantastic voyage across the Atlan- tic Ocean all the way to New York City—the place (James’s father always told him) where his dreams are sure to come true. James and the Giant Peach • SOUTH COAST REPERTORY •3 GOING BY THE BOOK: AN EXCERPT FROM JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH This excerpt from James and the Giant Peach begins just after James, berated by his aunts, meets a strange old man. The old man gives him a package of magic, thousands of tiny, wiggly little green glowing things and tells him to drink it, then disappears. James hurries away to follow instructions, but trips and falls, spilling the contents of the bag. ames felt like crying. He would never get them back now—they were lost, lost, lost forever. But where had they gone to? And why in the world had they been so eager to push down into the earth like that? What were Jthey after? There was nothing down there. Noth- ing except the roots of the old peach tree…and a whole lot of earthworms and centipedes and insects living in the soil. But what was it the old man had said? Who- ever they meet first, be it bug, insect, animal, or tree, that will be the one who gets the full power of their magic! Good heavens, thought James. What is going to happen in that case if they do meet an earthworm? Or a centipede? Or a spider? And what if they do go into the roots of the peach tree? “Get up at once, you lazy little beast!” a voice was suddenly shouting in James’s ear. James glanced up and saw Aunt Spiker standing over him, grim and tall and bony, glaring at him through her steel-rimmed spectacles. “Get back over there immediately and finish chopping those logs!” she ordered. Roald Dahl’s 1961 first edition of James and the Giant Peach. Aunt Sponge, fat and pulpy as a jellyfish, came waddling up behind her sister to see what was going on. “Why don’t we just lower the boy down the well in a bucket and leave him there for he hadn’t slipped and fallen and dropped that the night?” she suggested. “That ought to teach precious bag. All hope of a happier life had gone him not to laze around like this the whole day completely now. Today and tomorrow and the long.” next day and all the other days as well would be “That’s a very good wheeze, my dear nothing but punishment and pain, unhappiness Sponge. But let’s make him finish chopping up the and despair. wood first. Be off with you at once, you hideous He picked up the chopper and was just brat, and do some work!” about to start chopping away again when he Slowly, sadly, poor James got up off the heard a shout behind him that made him stop and ground and went back to the woodpile. Oh, if only turn. 4 • SOUTH COAST REPERTORY • James and the Giant Peach ABOUT THE AUTHOR Roald Dahl was born in Wales in 1916 of Norwegian par- ents. He grew up in England and lived there until his death in 1990. At the outset of World War II, he joined the Royal Air Force and became a fighter pilot. After being injured by machine gun fire, his pain was so severe that he was sent back to England on the disabled list. He was then reassigned to Washington D.C., where he accidentally began his career as a writer in 1943, when he wrote his first children’s book, The Gremlins. First Lady El- eanor Roosevelt read the book to her grandchildren and liked it so much that she invited Dahl to have dinner frequently at the White House. He returned to England in 1945, and published his first collection of short stories for adults in 1946. Not until 1961, when James and the Giant Peach was published, did he realize that he had found his true calling—a discovery which co- incided with his marriage to American actress Patricia Neal and the birth of their first child, Olivia, for whom he began making up bedtime stories. He said, “If I didn’t have children of my own, I would have never written books for children, nor would I have been capable of doing so.” Over the course of his distinguished literary career, Dahl wrote more than a dozen children’s books, which made him one of the most popular writers of literature for young readers in the world. Today, he is widely acknowledged as a literary genius who changed children’s literature forever. In 2000, Roald Dahl was voted the U.K.’s favorite author, surpassing Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and even J. K. Rowling of Harry Potter fame. INTERVIEW WITH ROALD DAHL his interview was taken from from audio exciting stories that they’ll clips of a conversation with Roald Dahl want to read. conducted in 1988, two years before his death at the age of 73. You can hear the How do you get the ideas answers to these and other questions in for your stories? the author’s own voice at his official website: www. It always starts with a tiny little seed of an idea, roalddahl.com. a little germ, and even that doesn’t come very easily. T You can be mooching around for a year or so before What is it like writing a book? you get a good one. When I do get a good one, mind I would say that it’s rather like going on a very long you, I quickly write it down so that I won’t forget it walk across valleys and mountains and things. You get because it disappears otherwise rather like a dream. I the first view of what you see and you write it down. walk around it and look at it and sniff it and then see Then you walk a bit further, maybe up to the top of a if I think it will go. Because once you start, you’ve em- hill, and you see something else, which you also write barked on a year’s work so it’s a big decision. down. And you go on and on like that, day after day, getting different views each time of the same landscape How did you get the idea for James and the Giant really.