Alice in Wonderland
Lewis Carroll's Classic Tale

Lewis Carroll's wonderfully enchanting and timeless story of Alice's extraordinary adventures in Wonderland is brought to you in this incredible BITESIZE adaptation of the well-loved Children's classic. Follow the White Rabbit down the Rabbit hole, join in the Caucus race, have tea with the Mad Hatter and play croquet with the Queen of Hearts, as well as meeting a host of other enjoyable characters. Lots of fun and suitable for all ages. The full set, furry costumes and masks, lights and sound will create Wonderland right there in your school.
Why you're nothing but a pack of cards!

Alice in Wonderland

	SYNOPSIS Alice is walking along the riverbank with his older sister, who is reading, out loud, a book about William the Conqueror, to which Alice is supposed to be paying attention, but it is soon clear that her mind is elsewhere. Her sister gives up and leaves Alice daydreaming by the river. Alice is very surprised to see a White Rabbit go by, particularly one wearing a waistcoat. He is out for a Sunday Afternoon stroll. He stops and takes out a pocket-watch."Oh dear! Oh dear! Now, I shall be too late!". He rushes off and disappears down a rabbit hole. Curiosity gets the better of Alice, and she immediately follows him down the rabbit hole only to emerge in a hallway full of doors of different colours and sizes. She is just in time see the White Rabbit disappear through one. When Alice tries to follow she finds that it's locked. "Curiouser and curiouser! It's locked and I'm sure this is the way he went! Perhaps I should try another door, after all, there are so many to choose from!". But they are all locked except for a very small door, which Alice open. Through it she can see a wonderful garden on the other side, but she's much too big to get through the tiny door. While she wonders how she might make herself small enough to get into the garden, the White Rabbit enters by one of the doors, and leaves by another, but again Alice is unable to follow him. She starts to cry and only stops when she finds that the Rabbit has dropped a key which fits one of the doors. As she opens it, she is suddenly engulfed by a huge wave and has to tread water furiously to stay afloat. She is joined by a mouse and together they swim to shore, where they find a Dodo and a Duck who have also been caught in the wave and are trying to dry off on the sand. "Really Dodo, I don't know what your making all this fuss about. It's just a drop of water, my dear." "That's easy enough for you to say, Mistress Duck. I near drownded. I did. One minute, I was minding my own business and the next I was up to my wings in the stuff." The Mouse immediately takes charge and tries to dry them off by telling them a dry tale. This doesn't work so Alice recites "How doth the little busy bee", but the words come out all wrong and still no one is dry, so the Dodo suggests a Caucus race. "What's a Caucus-race ?", asks Alice. "Why, the best way to explain it, is to do it." So they all take part in the caucus race and so do two members of the audience. When it's done they all get prizes, even Alice. Suddenly the White Rabbit arrives, he is on his way to the Duchesses house for tea, but he's lost his white gloves. Mistaking Alice for his housemaid, Mary Ann, he sends her to fetch him some more.
	When Alice enters the Rabbits house, she quickly finds him some more gloves, but she also finds a small bottle, fortunately NOT marked poison, so she takes a drink. This may have been a mistake, though for she begins to grow... and grow... and grow until she fills the whole house, jamming the front door tight shut. The White Rabbit comes to see where she's got to and finding that he can't get through the front door, calls for Pat the gardener and Bill the Lizard to bring a ladder, climb onto the roof and go down the chimney. They are worried by the prospect and suggest going through the window instead. "What a splendid idea ! I wonder I didn't think of it." Only then do they realise that Alice's giant head is blocking the window. "Argh! A monster. Save me. Save me". They start to throw carrots at Alice trough the window, one of which she manages to eat. Fortunately, this causes her to shrink and she's able to slip away unnoticed. Trying to find her way to beautiful garden, Alice comes across a very bossy caterpillar, whose only advise is that "One path will take you there quicker, and the other path will take you there slower". Alice takes one path since "clearly both paths will take me there", and finds herself outside a grand house. A Frog footman is accepting a Letter brought by a Fish footman. "For the Duchess. An invitation from the Queen to play croquet." From inside the house there is a load of crashing, banging and sneezing, and the Duchess comes out carrying a baby through a cloud of smoke and steam. "Cook! More pepper I think." But Alice thinks there must be too much pepper already. At this remark the Cook leaves in a huff and the baby turns into a pig."Now, my dear, "said the Duchess,"have you seen the Mock Turtle yet ?" "No,"said Alice," I don't even know what a Mock Turtle is." So Alice is given into the care of a Gryphon, who takes her to visit the Mock Turtle and listen to his History. He tells her all about his schooldays and then prompted by the Gryphon, he tells her and demonstrates "what a delightful thing a Lobster Quadrille is!". After it's finished the Turtle and the Gryphon leave without saying goodbye or telling her which way she should go. Alice then has the strangest feeling that someone is watching her, but when ever she turns around there's no one there. Then out of nowhere the Cheshire Cat appears grinning from ear to ear. "I'm very glad you're here, Cheshire Puss. Could you please tell me which way I ought to go from here?". "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to." One path leads to the Mad Hatter's House the other to the March Hare's Garden."You could visit either. It makes no difference, they're both quite mad." Having met Hatter's before Alice decides to visit the March Hare. When she arrives the March Hare and the Mad Hatter are having tea in the Garden. The Dormouse is their too, but asleep inside the giant yellow teapot. Alice sits down to have tea with the madcap pair but they bamboozle her with their zany conversation. The Hatter sings a song; "Twinkle, twinkle little bat"; which he had sung at a grand concert given by the Queen of Hearts and the audience join in. But then he tells a sad tale of how his watch has stopped because he fallen out with Time, and ever since that It's always tea-time. Alice leaves still having had no tea.
	The path eventually leads her to the beautiful garden, she had been looking for. As she strolls across the lawn, she comes across three cards; the Two, Five and Seven of Hearts, they are painting all the white roses, red. "Why are you painting those roses?", asks Alice."Why the fact is, Miss, this here ought to have been a red rose-tree, and we put a white one in by mistake......and if the Queen was to find out, we should all have our heads cut off, for sure." At that moment a huge procession of cards approaches, ahead of the arrival of the Queen of Hearts. The three cards run around in panic, and leave. Alice is fascinated by the procession and introduces herself to the Queen. The Queen is very fond of beheading people and shouts "Off with her head!", but the King intervenes and instead Alice is invited to play croquet. But the game is a little more difficult than Alice is used to. For one thing the mallets are Flamingos and the balls are Hedgehogs, "and the hoops don't stand still for one minute to the next", she complains to the Cheshire Cat. "I must see after another execution I've ordered. Let the trial begin!" shouts the Queen. The King presides as Judge, the audience are sworn in as the Jury, and the prisoner; the Knave of Hearts brought in. "For the benefit of the jury, I shall read the accusation. The Queen of Hearts she made some tarts all on a summer day: The Knave of Hearts, he stole those tarts, and took them quite away!." . The verdict is called for. "No, no. Sentence first, verdict afterwards.", yells the Queen. "Stuff and nonsense.", shouts Alice," The idea of having the sentence first!" The Queen does not like to be contradicted in this way and calls for the Royal Executioner to cut off her head."Who cares for you? You're nothing but a pack of cards!". The cards surround her and she is whirled back... back......back... to wake up once more on the riverbank, with her sister calling for her to come in to tea. "Alice! Alice! Oh, there you are. Wake up, Alice dear. You must have fallen asleep". "Oh, and I've had the most curious dream."

As with all Bitesize Productions, Alice in Wonderland, uses a cast of multi-role playing Actors. In this case we have a cast of 4 girls. The Actress playing Alice, just plays that part since the show is all about her and she appears in every one of the scenes and is only off stage for very small amounts of time throughout the play. The other three Actresses cover the other 24 characters between them. The biggest problem Actors have in playing several characters is to keep them sufficiently different from each other. They are always schooled to emphasise the differences in characters, but with 8 characters each, this is always a bit of a tour de force. So in order to help them we have used a series of masks for the furry animal characters; the White Rabbit, Dodo, Mouse, Duck, Fish, Frog, Gryphon and the March Hare. The masks are based on a simple eye mask, over which the character's features are constructed, using papier mache techniques with canvas and PVA, and finished off using suitable decorative fabric. (below you can see the White Rabbit and a Crow mask)
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Part of the construction brief for all our sets, is that they must be capable of being fitted; along with all the props, costumes and electrical equipment our teams carry; into the back of a transit sized van. This restricts the height to 2.4m, which is also a useful height for touring to schools; we only occasionally come across a hall which has a lower ceiling than this. The sets are therefore made to be assembled and disassembled at each venue in less than an hour; be light enough to carried comfortably between two people as well as of course fulfilling it's requirement as the scenery for the play. The construction of the set was made slightly more complicated by the number of different locations required for Alice, 10 scenes with 9 different locations. We decided on a cartoon style of decor, giving a slightly 2 dimensional look to Wonderland, using bright primary colours which were complemented by the costumes and the props. The crux of the play for the scenery is the Hall of Doors; Alice has just entered Wonderland and she finds herself in the hall of doors, each of the doors will feature in later scenes individually. So in it we see the doors to Rabbit's House; the Duchess's house; the door which leads to the Queen of Hearts garden; the door which leads to the shoreline of pool of tears and the door back to reality.

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