Alice in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass

Lewis Carroll

Harry Standjofski’s Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass are wonderfully adapted versions of the Lewis Carroll classics. They keep the aesthetic of the original while adapting the dialogue for a young contemporary audience.

Lewis Carroll initially created his fantastical world by exaggerating the characters of his friends. We wanted the design to reference Alice’s home and family from which her dream world is rooted.

We used a series of rotating panels for Act 1, Alice in Wonderland. The decorative side featured objects of the home and rotated to reveal tableaus in and around which the various scenes could take place. The tops of the panels and that of the back wall were cut to resemble frames and shapes used by Victorian collage hobbyists. A series of hidden openings and reveals keep the design in tune with Alice’s sense of surprise and discovery.

For act 2, Through the Looking Glass we opened the stage to allow for a clean space in which to have the chess game unfold. In this act the characters rather than the stage created the sense of movement. Outfitted with Heelys the royalty moved fluidly across the expansive stage. A mini forest of Tumtum trees sat stage left and created a nook in which smaller scenes such as the yew shop could be staged.