As we have taken Frog and Toad to different schools and to the New Canaan Library, my favorite question that has come up repeatedly is "Why aren't the actors dressed like animals?" or "Why aren't the actors wearing costumes at all?"
Kids are used to seeing their favorite characters in theme park style animal costumes, and while of course that wasn't an option for a musical where we want to be able to see the actors' faces and hear their own voices, it's easy to see why they would wonder.
When a director and design team get a script, there are so many possibilities for what world we would create. I was particularly drawn to this material because the possibilities were endless. There are 30 animals we have to portray... turtle, mole, squirrel, lizard, etc... (when you watch the show try counting them all).
While we are lucky to have the beautiful illustrations of the famous books, even with all the resources in the world, it would be really tough to recreate those two dimensions in a 3D world. I wouldn't want to. The great thing about plays and this one in particular, is that they force the audience to use their imaginations. We have just five actors playing a whole forest full of characters and representing an entire world.
So there's our challenge! In April before we even had auditions for actors, I sat down with my costume designer, Erin, and set designer, Chris, to decide what would be the most compelling way to represent the story with what we have. We have a tent, we have five humans and we knew we would have the sets of two other productions that we are performing in rep with (...Charlie Brown and Carousel).
We started to talk about solutions to specific animals, the bird toys whose wings can flap and the idea for someone to wear(!) a turtle sandbox. It became clear that by using props rather than costumes to represent different characters we could be more creative and make super fast changes from one character to the next. Furthermore, we started to realize that some of these animal toys were iconic backyard toys, which felt right.
This thought path led us to decide the world of our play: a backyard, more hardware store than toy store.
The actors' general denim costumes are sort of gardening clothes and almost all the other materials are real objects from a yard - an umbrella, a sandbox, a pool toy - used in theatrical ways. We tried to keep these objects bright and neon where possible to visually pop out of the background.
The audience won't necessarily be aware of these decisions, but they hopefully sense a clear Frog and Toad visual unity whether we perform in the tent, at a school or on the moon. Let's go do a performance on the moon.
We still have several performances at Waveny Park
http://stonc.tix.com/Event.asp?Event=372284
and a special engagement at The Katherine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center in Old Saybrook
http://www.katharinehepburntheater.org/blog/events/event-details/?EventsID=422
Join us!
