A NOISE WITHIN’S REPERTORY THEATRE SEASON AUDIENCE GUIDE By Eva Le Gallienne & Florida Friebus Adapted from Lewis Carroll Directed by Stephanie Shroyer Edu TABLE OF CONTENTS Character Map . 3 Synopsis . 4 About the Author: Lewis Carroll. 5 About the Adaptors: Eva Le Gallienne and Florida Friebus 7 Timeline: The History of Alice in Wonderland . 8 The Victorian Era: The Historical Backdrop of Alice in Wonderland . 9 Notes on Alice in Wonderland from Adaptor Eva Le Gallienne . 10 A Whole New World: Alice in Wonderland and Developmental Psychology . 11 Alice in Wonderland and Development. 12 The Role of Games in Alice in Wonderland ............ 13 Fantastical Nonsense: Nonsense Literature and Alice in Wonderland ......... 15 Alice and the Hero’s Journey . .. 17 Themes .. 19 Curiosity and Imagination .. 19 Logic and Madness . 19 Transformation and Loss of Innocence . 19 Ken Booth Lighting Designer . 21 Josh Grondin Sound Design . 22 Additional Resources . 23 A NOISE WITHIN’S EDUCATION PROGRAMS MADE POSSIBLE IN PART BY: Ann Peppers Foundation The Green Foundation Mara W . Breech Foundation Kenneth T . and Capital Group Companies Eileen L . Norris Foundation Michael J . Connell Youssef and Kamel Mawardi Foundation Fund The Dick and Sally Roberts Ralph M . Parsons Foundation Coyote Foundation Steinmetz Foundation The Jewish Community Foundation Cover Photo: Erika Soto by Daniel Reichert . 3 A NOISE WITHIN REPERTORY SEASON | Spring 2021 Audience Guide Alice in Wonderland CHARACTER MAP White Rabbit Mouse Dodo Constantly worried and slightly Meets Alice swimming in a pool Friends late to everything, he is a servant of her tears . He promises to help with Mouse . Lory and herald to the Duchess and her dry off by rattling off the Proposes a the Queen of Hearts . driest information that he can . Caucus Caucus Race . Race participant . Duchess Frog-Footman Eaglet Disgraced because of a past Footman for the Caterpillar Caucus fight with the Queen of Hearts . Queen of Hearts . Discusses change with Alice and Race The Queen of Hearts has Invites the Duchess to offers her a mushroom to help her participant . ordered her execution . She is play croquet . get to the size she would like to be . concerned with finding the morals of all situations . Alice Cook A seven-year-old with a grand imagination . She Works for the steps through a looking glass and enters into Duchess . Wonderland . Mad Hatter Cheshire Cat March Hare Dormouse Co-host of the tea party Alice Wonderland creature who has Wonderland creature and Sleepy Wonderland joins . He recently angered the power to appear and vanish . friend of the Mad Hatter creature and friend of Time by not keeping the He advises Alice that everyone and the Dormouse . the March Hare and Mad proper beat during a musical in Wonderland is mad . Co-host of the tea party Hatter . performance for the Queen of Alice joins . Hearts . Testifies in the Knave of Hearts’ trial . Two, Five, and Seven of Spades Gardeners for the Queen of Hearts . Red Queen Introduces Alice to Knave of Hearts The King of Hearts Wonderland’s chessboard . Member of the Married to the The Queen of Hearts Advises Alice to travel Queen of Hearts’ Queen of Hearts . Temperamental queen who is through the chess squares court . He stands Presides over the quick to order that others be of Wonderland and trial after he trial of the beheaded . Married to the King promises that when Alice is accused of Knave of Hearts . of Hearts . reaches the eighth square, stealing tarts . Alice will be a queen . Guard Railroad guard who chides Alice for not having a ticket for the train that travels from the first square to the fourth square . Humpty Dumpty White Queen Sheep The egg that the Sheep sold to Tweedledee and Owner of a shop Alice . Surly and self-assured, he Tweedledum A queen Alice meets on her Alice visits on her sits high on a wall, confident that Twins who live in the fourth journey through the squares . journey through should he fall, all the king’s horses square . Together they recite She “lives backwards,” that is, and all the king’s men will put him the poem of "the Walrus and she knows what will happen the squares . She the Carpenter" for Alice, a in the future . She offers to sells Alice an egg . back together again . He lives in poem full of moral ambiguity . hire Alice as a companion . the sixth square . The White Knight A clumsy knight who has trouble staying on his horse . He lives in the seventh square . 4 A NOISE WITHIN REPERTORY SEASON | Spring 2021 Audience Guide Alice in Wonderland SYNOPSIS At exactly seven-and-a-half years old, Alice has an active and vivid imagination . One afternoon, as she plays chess with her cat, Dinah, she begins to describe one of her latest imaginations—an idea she calls the Looking-Glass House . The rooms in the Looking-Glass House look much like the rooms in Alice’s current house, only they appear reversed . Alice remarks that she is going to pretend that the entrance into the house is through the looking glass “Mad Tea Party” by John Tenniel, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) . hung in her drawing room . As she describes the short-lived as the Queen of Hearts quickly insists entrance into the new house, the actual looking- that the Gryphon, one of her courtiers, introduce glass in the drawing room morphs into a portal, and Alice to the Mock Turtle, a dour turtle with a self- Alice steps through it into a new world . proclaimed grim life story . Alice meets the Mock Turtle and hears what the turtle has to say . However, As soon as she steps into the new realm, Alice the Mock Turtle’s story is cut short when the White notices a small door . Near the door, there is a table Rabbit enters to share news that a trial is beginning on which sits a vial with a tag that says, “Drink Me ”. in the court . The Knave of Hearts has been accused At her current height, Alice is too tall to fit through of eating some tarts that did not belong to him, and the door . Desperate to explore the garden beyond he is on trial for his life . the door, Alice drinks from the vial in the hopes that it will help her get to the right size to enter The trial is full of antics, and the lack of logic during the garden . As soon as she drinks, Alice begins the trial baffles and frustrates Alice . Finally, Alice to change sizes . Eventually, once she becomes proclaims that the trial is nonsense . Because of the the right size to fit through the door, she realizes outburst, the Queen of Hearts orders that Alice be that she has left the key to the door on top of the beheaded . Before the Queen’s guards can catch her table where she found the vial . Frustrated at her though, Alice escapes the courtroom . predicament, Alice begins to cry, and her tears pool On the run, Alice ends up in a realm that looks like a into a large body of water . Alice begins to swim in giant chessboard . There, she meets the Red Queen her tears and as she does so, she encounters the who advises Alice to travel through the squares of Mouse . He promises to dry her off by reciting the the chessboard . The Red Queen lets Alice know that driest information that he knows . Once ashore, the once she reaches the eighth square on the board, Mouse introduces Alice to the Dodo, the Lory, and she will become a queen . Alice decides to follow the Duck . the Red Queen’s advice and sets out on a journey After witnessing a caucus race - a nonsensical game through the chessboard squares . that satires political races - between the Mouse, In each square of her journey, Alice enters a the Lory, the Duck, and the Dodo, Alice begins to different realm of Wonderland and encounters explore Wonderland on her own . Her exploration the eccentric characters who live there . The leads to encounters with various mystical creatures catalogue of characters Alice meets include a strict and characters such as an enigmatic Caterpillar, a railroad guard, the perplexing twins Tweedledee Frog-Footman, a disgraced Duchess, and a vanishing and Tweedledum, the voyeuristic White Queen, a Cheshire Cat . As she interacts with Wonderland’s surly sheep, the irritable Humpty Dumpty, and the inhabitants, Alice begins to realize that this new confused White Knight . world operates upon a very different set of logic and natural laws than her world does . Eventually, Alice Finally, Alice reaches the eighth square of the board finds herself at a tea party with the Mad Hatter, the and is crowned Queen and begins to rule alongside March Hare, and the Dormouse . At this party, Alice the Red and White Queens . The queens decide to learns about the Queen of Hearts and the brutal way throw a banquet in honor of Alice . As the characters in which she rules the land . of Wonderland toast to Alice’s health, Alice becomes overwhelmed and proclaims that she cannot stand When Alice leaves the tea party, she finds herself in Wonderland any longer . Suddenly, everything around the Queen of Hearts’ garden . The Queen of Hearts her vanishes, and Alice wakes up . She is back in her invites Alice to a game of croquet in which upside- own home with her cat, Dinah . Her adventure, it down flamingos are used as mallets . Alice has some seems, was all a dream . ♦ trouble playing with these mallets, but the game is 5 A NOISE WITHIN REPERTORY SEASON | Spring 2021 Audience Guide Alice in Wonderland ABOUT THE AUTHOR: LEWIS CARROLL Lewis Carroll was born on January 27, 1832 as Charles Lutwidge Dodgson in Daresbury, Cheshire, England .