Stewart Hall transformed beautifully into the Little Princess Playhouse on Saturday morning for the double feature production, “Alice in Wonderland” and “Princess Club.”
The show put on by Shippensburg University student actors served as their final project for Children’s Theatre. With a majority of the students involved with the production being education majors, the show was a great opportunity for them to interact closely with children.
SU Professor of Theatre Arts, Paul Leitner alongside his wide, Gretchen Leitner, who together created the idea of Little Princess Playhouse eight years ago, served respectively as the director and artistic director of this weekend’s production.
Individuals arrived at Stewart Hall early to grab their seats for the show. Some children ran and found their places on the floor close to the stage to sit, while others sat on their parent’s laps anxiously and excitedly waiting for the show to begin.
In “Alice In Wonderland,” which was the first play in the double feature, junior Halle Shank played Alice. In the play Alice is a young girl, who falls asleep and dreams of this mystical world that she thinks is real. She enters this land where she follows a white rabbit and it leads her into a lot of unexpected adventures. She meets the Mad Hatter at a tea party, the Cheshire Cat who gets her in some trouble with the Red Queen, and other characters who makes her dream even more adventurous, but at the same time seem so real.
With only having one minute for transition, following the conclusion of “Alice in Wonderland,” the cast quickly changed the set and jumped into gear for the next show, “Princess Club.”
In “Princess Club” all the princesses came together to discuss its new show “Frozen” with the legendary Walt Disney. The purpose of the meeting was for the princesses to test Elsa and Anna to see if they were worthy of being in the Princess Club and their Princess Sorority.
The other princesses gave Elsa, who was played by freshman Victoria Williamson, a hard time because of her strange power of freezing things. The princesses saw this power as being dangerous. However, Anna, played by junior Alexandria Hamill was there to defend her sister.
The princesses sat around and discussed different flashbacks of the most exhilarating parts of their films. The sorority of princesses consisted of Tinkerbelle, Ursula, Ariel, Cinderella, Jasmine, Pocahontas, Belle, Snow White, Rapunzel and Merida.
The princess sorority decided to test Elsa and Anna to see if they could bake a pie in five minutes, beat Simba the King of the Jungle and if they could charm a prince. Elsa and her sister passed every test, but Elsa declined charming a prince. She said that her sister was her best friend and that she did not need to have a boyfriend to define who she was. Elsa expressed that being a princess is just being yourself and loving who you are.
The princesses were warmed by Elsa’s fierce speech and quickly determined that the sisters were worthy of the princess title and could join the club.
Once the show was over, the lights illuminated the room and the children ran to the cast to get pictures with their favorite characters.
“The best part for me was also working with the children,” Shank said. “We were able to perform the show right in front of the kids eyes and have the fairytales come to life. It was honesty a blessing to see the kids light up with excitement.”
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