Following the three month run of Prince Caspian this spring, Logos Theatre in South Carolina has announced plans to adapt The Horse and His Boy. Their previous two Narnia productions have used special effects and puppetry normally only seen on Broadway or West End. Both Aslan and Prince Caspian’s horse Destrier were performed using life size puppets similar to War Horse. Last week artistic director Nichole Stratton shared an update on the production,”We have the puppeteers working on the designs of the horses they are sculpting the heads right now beginning the whole process of making the horses. We have done some preliminary casting…we’ve got two really great potentials for Shasta and Corin and a really great potential for Aravis.” There will also be open casting for members the community.
Nichole Stratton has personally worked with C.S. Lewis’s stepson Douglas Gresham on developing the 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.”
“The style for Horse and His Boy that kind of emerged while I was working on the script was the kind of Calormene storytelling. People are going to love the way we are dealing with Aravis telling her story and as she is telling her story the whole story just ended up morphing around her. She goes into the story and out of the story…You are in this Calormene great storytelling that we are keeping the audience with us and scenery going all around. She will walk into a scene and be in it and walk out of a scene and keep telling the story…I think that is important because he keeps in the writing bringing up the fact that the Calormenes are great story tellers, so we really want to make it look like it is just Dynamite!”
“The whole look of this book is different too, it’s got more of that Arabian feel to it with the Calormenes and Tashbaan and all of the stuff we are going to be doing…The sets are going to be absolutely beautiful.”
Nichole Stratton in NarniaFans LIVE
Douglas Gresham will attend the world premiere of the show next March. The Academy of Arts is also planning on making a DVD and live stream of this show available to fans who can not travel to South Carolina. (DVD and live stream canceled due to licensing rights, but a behind the scenes documentary DVD will be produced instead)
