Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2002 16:46:41 -0800
Subject: PUPT: Sudden topicality


I had the strangest thing happen today.  I was teaching a workshop on
glove puppetry.  This is a workshop I've taught for years (incidentally
using those toilet paper tubes we were discussing earlier).  Part of the
class involves putting the students into groups and having them adapt
"the 3 little pigs."  

We talk about how adaptation work, and that if you change something in
the story you have to look at how it changes everything.  For instance a
"Big Bad Bunny" might choose to "Hop" the house down, rather than
huffing and puffing.

One group wanted to know what would happen if no one in their group
wanted to be a wolf?  I've had this happen before, so I gave them my
standard answer that building the houses could be the end of the story
(Dull, but okay) or they could come up with something else to make the
houses come down.  You see where this is headed don't you.  In the
flurry of usual suggestion "Hurricane, tornado, bad construction..."
came "A Bomb."  I waved that away easily enough.  They didn't want a bad
guy and someone would have had to put a bomb there.  No bad guy, no
bomb.

However, suddenly I was face to face with the uncomfortable notion that
The Big Bad Wolf and the Three Little Pigs is a story about a terrorist
trying to knock peoples' houses down.  It's not like I'm going to stop
doing this workshop, but geez- is there any aspect of our lives that
9-11 didn't touch?  

How about you- do you have shows that you've suddenly found topicality
in?

Mary

-- 
Mary Robinette Kowal
Other Hand Productions
http://www.otherhandproductions.com


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