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The Little Prince

The third year of the Oberlin Summer Theater Festival will take off for outer space on July 1, 2011, with The Little Prince, based on the beloved children's novel by Antoine de Saint-Euxpery and adapted by Rick Cummins and John Scoullar.

When a frustrated aviator crashes in the Sahara desert, it appears that he is stranded without hope—until he meets a startling and mysterious little boy who reminds him, bit by bit, of the crucial power of imagination and the complexities of love. "These are the things that literally keep us alive and make us people," director Alexis Macnab explains. "Those stories that are classic, that have lasted over time, do so because they're so deep that they talk to a part of us from before we learned to judge. It's the grown-ups in the audience, like the Aviator, who need to remember how to think like that."

Although the novella is usually categorized as children's literature, Macnab calls The Little Prince "a story for everyone. Ultimately," she declares, "it's about the importance of hope as a life-saving force; it's a complicated and adult journey. But if you can't explain it to a six-year-old, you're not saying it simply or deeply enough."

To tell a fantastical story that traverses the cosmos and runs the gamut of human, animal, and floral characters, Macnab and her design team will use puppetry—an intricate art form that has become an OSTF staple. The iconic illustrations from the book will be depicted by large-scale shadow puppets, she explains, which "convey the spectacular nature of the scenes and the vastness of the desert where the story takes place." The smaller costume puppets, which Macnab calls "really funny," will help the actors embody an absurd and otherworldly cast of characters, including a bossy king, a busy businessman, an unblinking lamp-lighter, an arm-chair geographer, and a conceited man looking for compliments.

   

All performances take place in Hall Auditorium.

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Company

Director	Alexis Macnab
Cast
Aviator	Matthew Wright*
The Little Prince	Marina Shay
Rose/Snake/Fox	Courtney Merrell
Men on the Planets/ Ensemble	Alex Huntsberger Ralph Johnson
*This actor appears courtesy of The Actor's Equity Association. For cast bios, see the complete company.