A staged reading of a new adaptation of Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows by Patrick Lamerson
February 19 & 20 at 2:00pm
The Wikipedia entry for The Wind in the Willows describes it as, “A classic of children’s literature by Kenneth Grahame, first published in 1908. Alternately slow moving and fast paced, it focuses on four anthropomorphised animal characters in a pastoral version of England. The novel is notable for its mixture of mysticism, adventure, morality, and camaraderie.”
While I was in the process of giving up my life in the “Wide World” and moving permanently to Provincetown, the stress drove me to find some light reading to help me fall sleep. I found much more than that in The Wind in the Willows. It is the story of Mole who has lived a perfectly ordinary life according to the rules and conventions of society but has never felt “connected” or satisfied. One day he leaves his safe and tidy burrow and discovers The River and its community of beings. Mole gives up his old life and embraces his new one by connecting to this community and the rhythms of Nature that move it and shape it. I realized that this was also my story and the story of most of the people who have moved to Provincetown. I decided that I wanted to make this story into a play to share with my new community. The product is this adaptation of Wind in the Willows. Through this workshop process I hope to perfect the adaptation in hopes of a full production next year. I my research I also found this excerpt in Wikipedia from The Enchanted Places, by A. A. Milne’s son, Christopher (Christopher Robin Milne of Winnie-the-Pooh fame), who says of The Wind in the Willows:
A book that we all greatly loved and admired and read aloud or alone, over and over and over. This book is, in a way, two separate books spliced into one. There are, on the one hand, those chapters concerned with the adventures of Toad; and on the other hand there are those chapters that explore human emotions – the emotions of fear, nostalgia, awe, wanderlust. My mother was drawn to the second group, of which “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn” was her favourite, read to me again and again with always, towards the end, the catch in the voice and the long pause to find her handkerchief and blow her nose. My father, on his side, was so captivated by the first group that he turned these chapters into the children’s play, Toad of Toad Hall. In this play one emotion only is allowed to creep in: nostalgia.
Interestingly I had already chosen to focus on Mole and Rat and to leave out much of Toad’s story. I even end the piece with the section on “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.” Please come to our reading February 19th and 20th at 2:00, this process needs your feedback.
Patrick Lamerson