For two weekends every fall, the Cutler Majestic Theatre at Emerson College departs from its eclectic repertoire of operas, comedy shows, and internationally renowned dance companies to welcome Emerson Stage s Theatre for Young Audiences production. As part of its mission to offer theatre to families, Emerson Stage will present The Hundred Dresses this season, a story that highlights and examines everyday tribulations, including ruthless intolerance, all children are faced with. However, director Bob Colby hopes the message of this piece will speak not only to audience members rolling into the Majestic in strollers, but also to every ticketholder, regardless of age. The history of these annual productions span all the way back to 1920, when an undergraduate senior at Emerson decided to undertake what is now considered the first TYA project. In fact, it was so warmly received the college hired the student to return after graduation to produce similar pieces, cementing Emerson as the first college in Boston to present children s theatre. In past years, TYA productions have included The Witch of Blackbird Pond and, most recently, a 90-minute rendering of A Midsummer Night s Dream. Colby, director of the theatre education program and associate professor at Emerson, is proud of how the tradition has evolved over time, and is once again carrying it out at the Majestic with The Hundred Dresses.Based upon a children s book by Eleanor Estes, Dresses was adapted by Mary Hall Surface, four-time Helen Hays award nominee and one of literature s most celebrated authors of work geared toward young people. Set in the 1930s, the play tells the story of Wanda Petronski (senior Laura Dadap), a young Polish immigrant who moves to a new town only to face a multitude of new obstacles. After claiming that she owns 100 dresses, she is taunted by her peers and teased mercilessly by Peggy (sophomore Alyssa Gomez) for wearing the same dress every day. However, upon discovering Wanda s exquisite drawings of these hundred dresses, Peggy s best friend Maddie (senior Inge Kellermann), who neither torments nor stands up for Wanda, recognizes the consequences of bullying and finds an unlikely friend. Colby s unique staging of Dresses is informed by his sense of America s rich cultural heritage and ultimately aids in elevating the piece s message. I was struck how in 1944, when the author wrote the book, she had a vision that somehow there was a white America into which another white European immigrant would arrive and there would be tensions and teasing, Colby said. Now we know from our perspective, even in 1944, there really is no such thing as an all-one-thing community. Everybody comes from someplace. Nobody was born here. Colby, in developing his concept, was intrigued by the fascinating cultural backgrounds of Emerson students. By casting actors whose families span the globe, relationships between characters become more complicated, as teasing is often motivated by language, ethnicity and race. Without trying to push or distort the story, we decided that it might look and sound a little different because of the people that are on stage, he said.Instead of dwelling upon how his actors should look in relation to their character s ethnicity, Colby decided to focus more on telling the story through the use of language. Though Wanda s family may not physically appear to be Polish, their accents and beliefs are what unite them. This allowed him to disregard an actor s exterior and slip dress cast talented students who have a natural ability to play children, such as Kellermann, who has South African roots. As a result, the layer of diversity present among students in the cast only enhanced the complex way in which children interact with one another.While Colby aimed to craft a weightier version of Dresses, he has also tapped into his years of experience in working with young people and fringe dress respect for the way they view the world to pique their interest. This play is about the dynamics of their world, he said. If I want to speak to them, the hardest part is not talking down to them, its my being smart enough to help the actors recreate a world that those kids are expert in and 80's dress up understand. They re not going to respect it unless I get it right. I have to work hard to honor their world so they recognize it and engage with it. Colby, in speaking about the piece s transition from page to stage, praised how Mary Hall Surface altered the play s ending. Her revisions emphasize that a reluctance to openly oppose discrimination is often equally as harmful as prejudice itself, especially in Maddie s case. The ending of the book has a hopefulness of peace, truth, and love winning out in the end. I m not sentimental in that way. I actually think it s harder than that, he said. Teasing and bullying happens. Some of us don t step up and do the right thing. We might have wish we d done better, but we can t just have a magical solution. Colby trusts spectators will benefit from this ageless lessonbelieves that If you spend enough time around any child, you re going to learn something about them. Having spent time learning about the young characters in Dresses with his cast of 11 actors, he expects that audiences, whether young or young at heart, will learn something significant from them.
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