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Lewis Carroll’s epic fantasy, “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” is 150 years old this year, but contemporary retelling keeps the story as fresh now as it was when first published in 1865.
Honolulu Theatre for Youth is celebrating the story’s anniversary with “Anime Alice,” a cross-cultural mash-up of Victorian England and postmodern Japan created by HTY actor/playwright Alvin Chan.
HTY audiences know Chan as both a talented actor and as the guy who wrote “Anime Momotaro” and “A Bollywood Robin Hood.”
‘ANIME ALICE’
Presented by Honolulu Theatre for Youth
>> Where: Tenney Theatre
>> When: 4:30 p.m. Saturdays through Sept. 19; also at 2 p.m. Aug. 29
>> Cost: $20 (adults), $15 (seniors) and $10 (ages 3-18)
>> Info: www.htyweb.org or 839-9885
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Chan says “Anime Alice” was a bigger challenge. “It’s such a complicated story,” Chan said during a break in rehearsals. “There’s so many characters, (and there’s) the growing and the shrinking, and the only way I could think of doing it was with anime and traditional Japanese theater.”
Adapting the story for a cast of four people, Chan culled the list of characters from “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking-Glass” and selected those most crucial to the main story — including the Mad Hatter, the White Rabbit, the Queen of Hearts and Tweedledee and Tweedledum.
HTY company actor Maile Holck stars in the title role.
Chan joins Junior Tesoro and Christina Uyeno in playing two dozen other characters; and Chan and director Eric Johnson are using puppets to portray others.
“Invisible” black-clad stagehands create many of the special effects. But because HTY audiences skew to those new to theater, Chan has the stagehands introduce themselves to the audience before the show so the younger children will understand the concept of stage “invisibility” during the performance.
Patrick Oiye, who played taiko, shamisen and bamboo flute in HTY’s production of “Rock’n the Holidays With Rakugo!” in December, is returning to play live music over prerecorded video game sound effects. Chan describes the results as having “a New Age feel mixed with traditional Japanese instrumentation.”
“There’s a huge Japanese quality to this one for me, and so I wanted to definitely implement a lot of Japanese culture and language into ‘Alice.’ In this version, Wonderland is kind of her imagination taking control of what (she thinks) Japan might be.”
A free study guide with suggestions for story-related activities is available at www.htyweb.org.
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COURTESY BRAD GODA