Backstory,
or WHY CINDERELLA?
My writing process is an emotional one. It isn’t very technical, and what technical there is is so boring that I will spare you that talk. I start by questioning my feelings. Mostly about what would be fun. On this show, my immediate feeling was:
Why do another version of Cinderella? There are over four hundred catalogued versions of the story alone. There have been movies, plays, pantomimes, ballets, operas, songs, musicals. SEVERAL musicals. What possible reason could there be to do another one?
Well, I could give you the time-honored reason that children love to hear the same story again and again. I could also tell you that adults like to hear the same story again and again, but we like the local shifted and the names changed. Romantic comedies and action flicks (my two favorites) are perfect examples of this. But none of this is why I wrote the show. Or how.
I wrote it for my daughter.
Tears of Joy approached me about doing a musical for them in January 1999, when my wife was three-months pregnant with our child. I was supposed to be at a meeting with the Artistic Director to talk about what fairy tale I would like to adapt. It was a lunch meeting, because in the morning I was with my wife for a checkup and ultra-sound. I had just found out that my child was a girl. I wanted to tell my daughter a story. A story with a girl as the heroine. A musical since, next to her mother, musicals are what I love most in the world. And I really wanted her to like it. In that desperate, I’m-going-to-be-a-daddy-for-the-first-time-and-for-the-rest-of-my-life-and-I-need-to DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT kind of way. I immediately thought of Cinderella. All little girls like Cinderella. Even boys like Cinderella, I thought, just in case the ultra sound was wrong.
Well, great. Cinderella has been done a lot. What should I do with it? How should I approach a very well known, solid story? Well, I didn’t really have any answer to that, so I thought that I better try another way of thinking. I thought about becoming a father for a moment. Ahh! Child. What did I, as a child, like about Cinderella? I liked the fact that her life was horrible. (I was a morbid child.) I liked the fact that she was alone in the world. I liked the fact that when she really needed it, help fell out of the sky. I liked the fact that she ended happy.
Good start. Lots of stuff to work with there. Now, as an adult, what did I like about Cinderella? I like the fact that she does everything for these people. By this, I mean she is good at a lot of things. Capable. I like the fact that she never wonders whether she deserves to go to the ball. No neuroses. I like the fact that someone is there to help her. I like the fact that she wants to dance. And I like the fact that she ends happy.
There are a few things that I don’t like, though. Or don’t believe. I don’t like that she is handed all the help she could possibly need from a Fairy Godmother who has been noticeably absent throughout the rest of her life. I don’t like that the Prince can’t recognize Cinderella in her servant clothes. I don’t like that they get married. I don’t believe any of these things. This is good. It gives me something to do. If I like the story just the way it is, there is less reason for me to do it, and a lot more danger that I will mess it up.
So I made some decisions about my Cinderella. Cinderella would go to the ball because she wanted to relive happy memories of dancing with her father, not to get married. She would have to make decisions over and over again to get what she wanted, and overcome fresh obstacles at every step. The fairy Godmother has never come up to this point because she is summoned by Cinderella’s tears, and Cinderella has tried to be brave. The Prince would not recognize her because the ball would be masked. He would both try to fit the shoe on a lady AND dance with her to test if she was Cinderella.
Another major influence in the writing was the fact that my commissioning company, Tears of Joy, does their shows with two puppeteers. Well, I immediately thought that since this is a woman’s story, there wasn’t any need for any more men on the project. So I decided early to have both performers be women. (I firmly believe the piece would work with a cast of six or seven, as well.)
I approached my friend Christopher Guardino to write the music, and he consented. The script came together in a very short time, and the show ran for 3 years, touring much of the West Coast. And on the final performance, my daughter, then almost four, got to see the show her daddy made for her. And thankfully, she liked it.
Copyright 1999, Mark LaPierre