Eight squares. Alice has a mere eight-square chessboard to cross in her journey to become a queen. But in the Lookingglass Theatre Company’s “Lookingglass Alice” — playing through April 3rd — Alice’s journey is anything but straightforward.
She quickly happens upon the Red Queen and they begin to run. Alice runs as fast as she can, panting, looking desperately ahead for a destination. They stop, having gotten nowhere. This is Alice’s first lesson. The Red Queen tells Alice that in this world, one must run as fast as one can to stay in place and twice as fast to get anywhere at all.
It is with this lesson and a supernatural flash of light that Alice, the Queen’s pawn, moves to queen’s first.
True to Lewis Carroll’s novels “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass,” Lookingglass ensemble member and Northwestern alum David Caitlin’s adaptation is an eclectic mix of intriguing characters, playful dialogue and underlying message. The opening marks the 18th anniversary of the founding of the Lookingglass Theatre Company, 821 N. Michigan Ave.; celebrates the company’s third staging of Carroll’s works; and revisits many of the issues the theater faces throughout its existence.
Queen’s pawn to queen’s second.
In Alice’s journey of self-discovery through the looking glass, she assists in Humpty Dumpty’s demise, encounters the verse-spitting, disappearing Cheshire Cat, and befriends the inventive White Knight. All the while she learns to keep an open mind and that to play, you must practice.
“Lewis Carroll was our company’s namesake; we tried to bring his work to the stage in a different way,” says Caitlin, the director. “But not just different for sake of being different, we wanted to find the best way to tell the story.”
Queen’s pawn to queen’s third.
With only a barebones set, the actors must rely on their natural talents to carry the show. Produced in association with the Actors Gymnasium, “Lookingglass Alice” stretches the boundaries of traditional theater. The actors teeter on stilts, somersault through the air, form human pyramids, fearlessly weave through suspended ropes and yes, act throughout the two-hour play.
“When we wrote the script, we tried to create a process and an environment where these actors could invent,” Caitlin says. “Most of the good ideas weren’t mine, they were the actors’. Instead of one person’s ideas, it was a group process.”
Queen’s pawn to queen’s fourth.
Caitlin almost entirely abandons the use of backdrops and sets in this piece. Instead he shifts the focus to lighting effects: squares of light projected onto the naked floor signify Alice’s path across the chessboard, the lights flare up to indicate scene transitions, and veritable light shows accompany every dance number.
“When (the narrator) Charles Dodgson told the story, it lived in his imagination,” Caitlin says. “We left as much as possible to the audience because no casting director or scene designer is better than your own imagination. We tried to use less to do more.”
Queen’s pawn to queen’s fifth.
Billowing blue curtains represent the ocean and as Alice, suspended in the air, floats over them, the audience is left to imagine the serenity of open waters. The image of the Wonderland universe is left to audience’s whim, becoming whatever they will it to be.
Queen’s pawn to queen’s sixth.
From curtain up to curtain down, “Lookingglass Alice” startles its audience out of a complacent theatrical experience. Actors climb over audience members and hand them props, directly involving them in the action. Voiceovers describe stage directions to cast and audience members alike. The audience leaves feeling like they took part in Alice’s journey.
The Lookingglass Theatre’s stage setup also brings the audience into the production. There are two sections of the audience that sit facing each other. Alice’s adventures unravel on a strip of stage in between the two seating sections. Everything from stage cleanup to scene setup unfolds in front of the audience’s eyes. Rather than showing the audience a play, Caitlin brings them into the action.
Caitlin explains his integration of the audience into his production: “‘Through the Looking Glass’ is about a mirror,” he says. “We wanted the audience to be a part of that reflection, to look across the room and, in the other audiences’ expressions, see themselves.”
Queen’s pawn to queen’s seventh.
In 1987 a group of aspiring actors took their first step onto the chessboard. While students at NU, future Lookingglass ensemble members Caitlin, David Schwimmer, Lawrence E. DiStasi, Joy Gregory and Andrew White staged Andre Gregory’s adaptation of “Alice in Wonderland” in Jones Residential College. Two years later they produced an original adaptation of “Through the Looking Glass,” which led to the founding, and naming, of the Lookingglass Theatre Company.
This group of NU graduates remains close to this day.
“I am so very lucky to have these relationships,” Caitlin says. “It is a community that extends beyond Northwestern, but exists because of Northwestern. I hope that every Northwestern graduate has the opportunity to experience that.”
For Lookingglass, and Charles Dodgson as well, Alice stepping onto the final square on the imaginary chess board marks not an end, but the beginning of the real journey — real life.
Queen’s eighth — Alice has become a queen. Now what?
Ticket prices range from $20 to $58 and showtimes are available at www.lookingglasstheatre.org or by calling 312-337-0665.
Weinberg sophomore Michael Burgner is a PLAY writer. He can be reached at [email protected].