Patience and a good ear

A piece I've written for the programme about adapting the book.

Patience and a good ear. They are the things Maia needs if she is to write down the songs she hears in the Amazon. They are also what I’ve needed over the years I have been writing this play.

When I have told people I am adapting Journey to the River Sea, the response from people who have read the book has been to tell me how much they loved it. Which is good – and not so good. Good, because it shows how many people think as I do, that Eva Ibbotson has written a wonderful book. Not so good, because it makes the job of adapting it even more daunting. There are an infinite number of ways to disappoint when you change something which people love as it is.

And adapting is change. Take the length of the play, for example. If you simply read the book out loud it would take many hours. The play will last closer to two hours, so some (most!) of the words have to go. As soon as I start to make decisions about what stays and what goes, there is the risk that we lose something which another reader really likes. There is no way to avoid that, particularly as I want this to be a play which can be enjoyed by people who have not read the book as well. (Although I’ll be thrilled if we inspire people to read it as a result.)

One difference between coming to a play and reading a book is what your imagination has to do. When you’re reading (or being read to) the pictures are ones you create in your head. That’s why people can have strong feelings about what actors look like in a story they love. When I talked to Ros, the director, we both wanted to make sure our audiences got to use their imagination as well. That gave me the freedom to create places by what the characters say and do. There are some early scenes set on a boat for example – I hope you will ‘see’ that boat where Maia and Clovis meet for the first time as vividly as you would if you were reading about it.

This way of telling stories goes back to the very beginnings of theatre. In film and television we ‘cut’ from one location to another mechanically – two events which did not happen in the same time and place can be recorded separately and pasted together. On stage, we will also be switching rapidly from one place to another – and at some points there may be two places on stage (and in your imagination) at the same time.

What I have tried to do when writing the play is to be true to the spirit of the book. I feel there is something special about the ideas and emotions and ‘feel’ of the book. I have tried to be faithful to that, rather than try and fit in every detail. But every change I have made has been done with the aim of giving our audience an experience as rich and funny and thrilling as the book is. Like Eva Ibbotson I was fascinated by the image of an opera house in the jungle – a huge theatre built deep inside the Amazon rainforest. The contrasts in that image are some of those I have explored in writing the play.

I travelled to the Amazon to find out more about the world Maia would have known. The people who paid for the opera house to be built were incredibly rich, but that wealth came from the work of people who were paid miserably if at all, and treated in appalling ways. The opera which was seen in that theatre, with its extravagant scenery, vast orchestra, and huge voiced singers is in one sense the opposite of all that is ‘natural’: the spontaneous living world of the rainforest untouched by technology. I walked through the rainforest and I sat in that theatre and both experiences were extraordinary. I hope the play manages to give you a sense of both worlds.

Look out too for how we decided to tell the story of what happened before Maia came to the Amazon. This is one of the ‘new’ elements – something which happens in the play which does not happen in the book. I knew I wanted to include the story of the ‘curse’ on the place the Carters live, but it would have taken a long time to act out the events, and meant introducing new characters who never had anything to do with Maia. My solution came from what I discovered about how people in the Amazon tell stories. I researched the rhythms and styles of traditional storytelling there and thought about what kind of language I should use to write that section. In the same way as it felt right to make the Goodleys an opera company in the play, and bring the peculiar wonders of opera on stage in the adaptation, I wanted to give a sense of another type of theatre, one which has its roots in Amazon life. I hope that comes across in the writing and the design and staging of that part of our story.

In the end, however, what I want is for you to go on a journey with these wonderful people which is as fulfilling as the journey you take with Eva Ibbotson’s book. It’s a different route to the same place, that’s all.