The Academy of Arts has produced top notch stage productions of Narnia stories including the first ever live show of Prince Caspian now playing in South Carolina until April 23 and The Horse and His Boy premiering March 2019. It is through this process that artistic director and playwright Nichole Stratton has developed a close relationship with Douglas Gresham. During a NarniaFans LIVE interview Nichole shared offering a brief update on the film status with a story about the first time Douglas Gresham read the script for The Silver Chair:
“He actually told us that it is one of the best scripts he has seen for the movies and he is very excited about Silver Chair…He is very passionate about trying to preserve the essence of the books. It is very important to him and I think that is what really made our relationship with him blossom and grow…He did actually talk about The Silver Chair and is very excited about it….He really made sure that this time even more than other times he wanted it to be what it needed to be according to the book….He said there was a point where he was sitting at the table and the people who were doing the script were actually hiding and waiting for him. He came in to the restaurant to sit down and look over the script. There was a certain element to the Puddleglum part that he really wanted to preserve and he had said to himself that if it wasn’t preserved he would not greenlight the production. And he said they were all waiting and hiding and he sat down at the table to read the script. They were all trying to watch his reaction. As he got to that point he said he just stopped and said, ‘Lord if they have not done what I’ve said I can’t greenlight this’. And he said the spirit just said back to him,’turn the page’. And so he turned the page and they had done what he said, so he was very pleased with that. So I think they are really trying to work with him and he is trying to really make sure they know how important it is to really be true to the book…That meant so much because he really did like the script.”
Nichole Stratton in NarniaFans LIVE
In the broadcast there was also a brief mention that Gresham has someone he is interested in for playing the role of Jill. This could be Millie Bobby Brown, but has not been confirmed. The Silver Chair film screenplay was not the only script that Gresham was pleased with. He had this to say about the script for Prince Caspian at Logos Theatre:
“If I had Nichole’s script for Prince Caspian, we would have used it for the movie. It was excellent. The Logos Theatre did some things on stage that seem impossible, but they worked, and they worked well. I want Nicole to write stage adaptations for all the stories in the Narnia Series.”
Douglas Gresham
The Academy of Arts is currently in development on a play of The Horse and His Boy. Nichole has already worked with Gresham to approve the script. This approved with very minor changes and this was Gresham’s reaction to The Horse and His Boy script:
“At different points it started to fill him up. At different points he said it almost brought me to tears at a few different moments throughout the script he said for two reasons. Because of how beautifully we told the story but how how closely we stuck to his step-father’s essence of the book.”
Nichole Stratton in NarniaFans LIVE
Douglas Gresham will fly to the United States to attend the world premiere of The Horse and His Boy in March 2019. He has also encouraged the Academy of the Arts to adapt all seven books to the stage which will be the mission of the new C.S. Lewis Memorial Theatre.
