Books Cook!
Directed by Elizabeth Swados
Young Audience Program
Performance
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
at 11am
School groups only • Grades K–4
WHO IS ELIZABETH SWADOS?
Elizabeth Swados is an American writer composer, musician, and theater director. She
is perhaps best known for her Broadway and international smash hit Runaways. It
garned her Tony Award for her direction. Her work has been performed on Broadway,
off-Broadway, at La MaMa, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Carnegie Hall, and locations all
over the world. She has also composed highly acclaimed dance scores for well-known
choreographers in the US, Europe, and South America.
Swados teaches in the drama department at New York University's Tisch School of the
Arts and at The New School's Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts as a visiting artist.
She has been creating social issue-oriented theater with young people for her entire
career. This work has culminated in a theatrical extravaganza for New York
University, The Reality Show, about the trials and tribulations of college in New York
City. The piece uses rock and roll, dance, and edgy humor and is performed each
summer by NYU students at Madison Square Garden.
She has published three novels, three non-fiction books, and nine children's books. She
is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Ford Fellowship, a Covenant Foundation
Grant, a Special International PEN Citation, a Cine Award, and a Mira Award, among
others.
THE BOOKS COOK
In the early 2000s, Elizabeth Swados launched a series called Books Cook! At New
York City’s Scholastic Store, where she took a number of the publisher’s short books
and turned them into verbatim musical revues. At FIAF, Books Cook! brings a dozen of
the most beloved American children’s books and a handful of French songs to life. This
production is based on a selection of popular books and features a group of young,
professionally trained actors interpreting selected scenes with original musical
arrangements in vaudeville-style mini-skits.
French Fairytales
French folklore encompasses the fables, fairy tales, and legends of the Gauls, Franks,
Normans, Bretons, Occitans, and other peoples living in France. Charles Perrault, one
of the most famous author of fairy stories, derived almost all his tales from folk sources,
but rewrote them for the upper-class audience, removing rustic elements. The
Précieuses rewrote them even more extensively for their own interests. Collection of
folk tales as such only began about 1860, but was fruitful for the next decades.
Charles Perrault (1628-1703)
Although Charles Perrault was considered a leading
intellectual of his time. He is now mostly remembered for his
fairy-tales. He was born in Paris on January 12, 1628. In
1697 he published Tales and Stories of the Past with Morals
(Histoires ou contes du temps passé, avec des moralités:
Contes de ma mère l'Oye). A book which contained eight
stories: The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood (La Belle au bois
dormant),Little Red Riding Hood (Le Petit Chaperon rouge),
Blue Beard (La Barbe Bleue), The Master Cat, or Puss in
Boots (Le Maistre Chat, ou le Chat Botté), The Fairies (Les
Fées), Cinderella, or the Little Glass Slipper (Cendrillon, ou la petite pantoufle de verre),
Ricky of the Tuft (Riquetà la Houppe), Little Thumb (Le Petit Pouçet).These narratives
were intended to amuse and educate young girls in how to become ladies. He
contrasted his folktale subject matter with details, asides, and subtext drawn from the
world of fashion. He used images from around him, such as the Chateau Ussé for
Sleeping Beauty and in Puss-in-Boots, the Marquis of the Chateau d'Oiron. His stories
often have morals, dealing with issues of achieving grace and beauty. They seem to
idealise these characteristics as some of the most important a young woman could
possess. Although he didn't invent any tales, he gave existing stories literary legitimacy.
Modern uses and Adaptations in the U.S.
From the beginning of his career as an animator, Walt Disney drew inspiration from a
number of classic European fairy tales and children’s literature. Perrault’s tales such as
“Cinderella” and “Sleeping Beauty” were made into films by Walt Disney in the 1950s,
transforming the classic texts into box office hits.
Cinderella illustrated by Gustave Doré
Sleeping Beauty illustrated by Gustave Doré
Cinderella by Disney
Sleeping Beauty by Disney
Almost as soon as he began producing animated shorts in the 1920s, Disney studied
the highest quality illustrated editions of popular classic fairy tales. In summer 1935,
Walt and his brother Roy along with their families went on an extended European
holiday where they purchased a number of illustrated books. In his book Walt Disney
and Europe, Robin Allan says: "While in Europe [Walt] had ordered a large quantity of
books...the Disney Studio Library received a further consignment from 5 July to 24
September 1935 with 90 titles from France, 81 from England, 149 from Germany..."
Recently the Disney Company
added another French story to their
long line of successful animations,
Beauty and the Beast (1991). The
original Beauty and the Beast was
written in 1756 by an aristocratic
woman, Jeanne-Marie LePrince de
Beaumont. If the fairy tales
previously written in the French
salons were meant for adults, de
Beaumont wrote her stories with the
purpose of instructing young girls.
Mme
de
Beaumont’s
conventionalization of fairy tales for
pedagogic purposes led to the
discouragement of the subversive
qualities of earlier tales; nevertheless, this conventionalization may be said to also have
led to a more general acceptance of fairy tales as a literary genre.
The Beauty and the Beast
By Disney
The Beaty and The Beast
illustrated by Walter Crane
In addition to these films inspired by
French stories, Disney has also made
animation features based on a
number of other European children’s
books and novels. The Hunchback of
Notre Dame released in 1996 by
Disney was fist written by the French
author Victor Hugo in 1829. When it
was announced that Disney would
produce an animated musical version
of the Hunchback of Notre Dame,
there were doubts about transforming
Victor Hugo's classic tale into an
appropriate children movie.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
illustrated by Gustave Brion
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
by Disney
Beyond Disney, other animation studios have been inspired by French fairy tales.
Shrek, made by Dreamworks, is a movie whose entire conceit is that all fairy tales are
real and co-exist in one world. This funny and smart film both satirizes and enacts a
fairy tale at the same time, offering humor for both children and adults. In Shrek series,
many characters from Perreault’s fairy tales appears:
Puss in Boots: Even though, Walt
Disney produced an animated black
and white silent short based on the
tale in 1922, every child remember
the Puss in Boots of the DreamWorks
animation with Antonio Banderas
reprising his voice-over. In the Shrek
films, the story of Puss in Boots bears
no similarities to the book.
Puss in Boots illustrated
by Gustave Doré
Puss in Boots by Dreamworks
The Little Red Riding Hood :
Little Red Riding Hood is
shown at the beginning of
Shrek 2, coming to the
gingerbread house and running
away leaving her basket
behind after seeing Shrek and
Fiona as ogres. She makes a
The Little Red Riding Hood
cameo in Shrek the Third,
The Big Bad Wolf by Dreamworks
illustrated by Gustave Doré
where she picks a dwarf's
pockets while cloaked in her
red hood. We can also see The Big Bad Wolf. The Big Bad Wolf is based on the
fairytale character, but differs from it by being a kind character. He rarely speaks, and
when he does his voice is somewhat dull and monotonous. He wears a pink dress,
recalling the grandmother of Little Red Riding Hood
Cinderella and Sleeping beauty are Princess Fiona’s Friends. The first one is obsessed
with cleanliness and tidiness after doing a great deal of housework for her stepmother
and stepsisters, the second likes to sleep a lot.
Source:
https://www.wikipedia.org
http://www.mouseplanet.com/fairytales/
http://originedisney.canalblog.com/
http://predoc.org/docs/index-36194.html
http://www.fabulousfairytales.com/facts/charles-perrault