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From Page to Stage: Locating the Spirit of Branar’s Adaptation of Oliver Jeffers’ How to Catch a Star

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Abstract

Oliver Jeffers’ best-selling picturebook How to Catch a Star (2004) has been the subject of several recent theatre adaptations for children. This paper provides a detailed case study of the 2017 stage adaptation created by the Irish-language theatre-company, Branar Téatar do Pháistí; an adaptation that has been highly praised for the manner in which it captures ‘the spirit’ of Jeffers’ original text. This paper asks what we mean when we speak of the ‘spirit’ of a picturebook, given that this elusive element, that has broadly been equated in adaptation theory with the ‘story’ (Hutcheon, A Theory of Adaptation, 2006) cannot be located solely within the verbal narrative of picturebooks, but rather resides in a complex interplay of words and pictures and that the full meaning of these narratives is only actualized when the reader engages in a performative relationship with the book. The adaptation of children’s picturebooks from page to stage has largely been overlooked by contemporary scholarship within both the field of children’s literature and the field of adaptation studies. The recent proliferation of theatrical adaptations of picturebooks shows, however, that this is a dynamic and emerging area. By viewing the highly creative and innovative strategies that Branar employed in their production of Jeffers’ classic within the context of both contemporary picturebook scholarship and modern theatre criticism, this paper aims to establish some criteria for the academic study of page to stage adaptation of children’s picturebooks.

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Notes

  1. London’s West End has recently hosted several plays derived from children’s picturebooks. These include Nick Brooke’s The Tiger who Came to Tea, the Selladoor family’s James and the Giant Peach, Seussical and Guess How Much I love You, Tall Stories’ The Gruffalo and The Gruffalo’s Child and Oliver Knussen’s fantasy opera of Where the Wild Things Are. Several smaller theatre companies now also specialise in picturebook adaptation. These include Nova Scotia’s Mermaid Theatre, the Netherlands’ Theater Terra, the Italian company, La Baracca, and the Galway-based, Branar Téatar do Pháistí (Branar Theatre for Children), one of the leading theatre companies making theatre for children in Ireland, who adapted Oliver Jeffers’ The Way Back Home with the Danish company, Teater Refleksion in 2014 and followed this up in 2017 with their adaptation of How to Catch a Star.

  2. The nationwide tour, which ran from August to December 2017, was almost entirely sold-out, and the play was later performed at the South Bank Centre in London and at the Children’s Theatre in Bath. In September 2019 the play was selected for the 2020 IPAY international showcase, an annual event run by the US based International Performing Arts for Youth which attracts programmers and curators from festivals and venues across North America, Canada, Australia, Asia and Europe.

  3. The picturebook was shortlisted for the Booktrust Early Years Award for best new illustrator on its release and in 2005 it won a merit award at the CBI Bisto Book of the Year Awards.

  4. This technique has been successfully employed in some contemporary picturebooks with a cinematic feel, such as Istvan Banyai’s Zoom (1998) and Rezoom (2008) and David Weisner’s Flotsam (2014).

  5. Contemporary children’s picturebooks that use ‘image’ bubbles effectively in place of ‘speech’ bubbles are Lily takes a Walk (1987) by Satoshi Kitamura and Penguin (2007) by Polly Dunbar.

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  1. National University of Ireland Galway, Galway, Ireland

    Lindsay Myers

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Lindsay Myers is a Lecturer in Italian and Children’s Studies in the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures at the National University of Ireland, Galway. She is the author of Making the Italians: Poetics and Politics of Italian Children’s Literature (Peter Lang, 2012) as well as several articles on Italian children’s literature, children’s fantasy and modern children’s film in journals such as The Lion and the Unicorn and Humanities and International Research in Children’s Literature. She has recently completed a monograph in Italian: Un fantasy tutto italiano: Le declinazioni del fantastico nella letteratura italiana per l’infanzia dall’Unità al XXI secolo (ETS, 2017).

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Myers, L. From Page to Stage: Locating the Spirit of Branar’s Adaptation of Oliver Jeffers’ How to Catch a Star. Child Lit Educ 52, 396–410 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-020-09414-9

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