Flight of the Dodo author-illustrator Peter Brown was our celebrity guest at Lifeline on January 18th.
Author visits are thrilling and most of us Lifeliners were just bouncing gleefully — but the adapter and the director are generally a smidge Anxious as they wonder about author response to “what we’ve done to his book.” Pretty big changes are required to put a book on stage. You have to do a lot of writing when you’re turning a picture book with just a few sentences into an hour-long musical. You want to think you’ve expanded in a way that builds on the author’s vision instead of — y’know — shattering it. So Rob and Paul were looking a little green about the gills.
Peter watched the 1pm show and chortled and guffawed throughout. Our spies even reported some knee-slapping. After the show Peter was pulled in several directions by autograph seekers who missed the earlier book-signing. We sold out of books — we were mobbed.
If you don’t know Peter’s work, treat yourself with a visit to his website. And if you haven’t seen Flight of the Dodo, I hope you’ll come visit us. We’ve got themes of teamwork and appreciating each other’s differences. We’ve got a flying machine and a terrifying storm. We’ve got Toy‘s psychedelic, danceable score. And we’ve got bird poop jokes. What’s not to love?
Dorothy Milne
Artistic Director