The Sights & Sounds of India: Re-Imagining THE JUNGLE BOOK

The Jungle Book creative team at the Taj Mahal: TJ Gerkens, Dan Ostling, Ajay Rathore Singh, Leo Chiang, Mara Blumenfeld, and Doug Peck.

When Disney Theatrical Group conceived of a stage version of the classic 1967 film The Jungle Book, they easily could have set out to create a replica of the movie that for decades has captivated generations of children with its celebratory music and lovable characters. Instead, they tapped Tony Award winner Mary Zimmerman, one of theatre’s most innovative directors, to reimagine their hit as a wholly original new work to be felt and experienced live at the theatre.

The Jungle Book has many of the hallmarks of a Mary Zimmerman adaptation. But this production posed additional complexity for the adaptation, as it draws from not one but two sources — both the 1894 Rudyard Kipling stories and the 1967 Disney animated film. Tonally, Kipling’s stories are poetic and his jungle is at times dark and violent, while in contrast, the Disney movie, set to the jubilant sounds of American swing and jazz, is fun and celebratory.

In the process of exploring how to balance the divergent elements of her two sources, Zimmerman found inspiration in Kipling’s personal biography: he was born in Bombay to English parents and lived in India until he was six years old when his parents sent him back in England. There, they left him in the care of a woman who ran a school out of her home, and, unbeknownst to them, physically and emotionally abused him until he left at age 10. Years later, when Kipling was a newly-married adult living in Vermont, he wrote the stories of The Jungle Book.

Nikka Graff Lanzarone as Peacock in The Jungle Book. Photo: Liz Lauren

“There is an almost desperate energy behind the creation of this world that was psychologically necessary for him,” Zimmerman said. “The romanticization and exoticism of India that he’s come to be criticized for, he’s come about in a well-earned way: he was born there and he lost it. He lost India as a child, and a child about the age of Mowgli.” Zimmerman drew from the stark contrast between Kipling’s happy early childhood in India and his fraught later years in England to establish the emotional tenor of the production. “I want the audience to experience the joy of that music and of living in a world where you are one with nature and the animals — even with all its dangers and its troubles. And also the recognition that you can’t stay there.”

In order to create her living jungle, Zimmerman and her team plunged into their design process, which is research heavy, immersive, and highly collaborative. She almost always works with the same design team — set designer Daniel Ostling, costume designer Mara Blumenfeld, and lighting designer T.J. Gerckens. When creating The Jungle Book, Zimmerman immediately recognized the need to honor its setting through design. “My very first impulse when this idea came up was to take the forms of Indian representation — visual and musical — seriously within the aesthetic of doing the show.” In order to capture the sights and sounds of Kipling’s India, the team spent two and a half weeks traversing the country — visiting 10 cities in one trip — listening to music on the streets, gathering textiles at markets, interacting with indigenous animals, and taking “thousands and thousands” of photographs.

Monique Haley (Elephant), Akash Chopra (Mowgli), Ed Kross (Colonel Hathi), and Anjali Bhimani (Baby Elephant) with the rest of Colonel Hathi’s elephant army in The Jungle Book. Photo: Liz Lauren

The world that appears on stage will be infused with the spirit of its setting as filtered through the eyes of the design team. “We’re not hoping to create a museum-like replication, because it’s a work of intense imagination — almost florid imagination — on both Kipling’s and Disney’s part,” Zimmerman said. “We’re going for inspiration in forms, colors, pattern, shape, and volume of things — it penetrates the design at every level and in every scene.” And though The Jungle Book sprang out of a familiar film with iconic animation and music, this new version promises its own unforgettable experience, alive with the spirit of its inspiration and saturated with the sights and sounds of India.

This article originally appeared in Goodman Theatre’s OnStage publication.

The Music of THE JUNGLE BOOK

“I was blown away by Mary Zimmerman’s transporting and visually stunning production. It immediately reminded me of what I love about her work – her big heart, sophisticated mind, and playful imagination. In this latest creation, she brilliantly interweaves Kipling’s evocative prose with the story of the classic film and marries traditional Indian instruments to its jazzy, instantly recognizable tunes. It’s a dream!”— Peter DuBois

Songwriter Richard Sherman and his brother Robert had not read Rudyard Kipling’s 1894 collection of stories when they were called into a meeting by Walt Disney to contribute to the development of a movie of The Jungle Book. It turns out that neither had any of the other animators or writers on the project. When Disney asked who of his team was familiar with the stories, not a person in the room raised his hand. “It was like a bunch of guys in school that hadn’t done their homework,” Richard Sherman remembers.

Music Director and Orchestrator Doug Peck in rehearsal for The Jungle Book.

Disney’s response? “Well, that’s good.” His reaction was genuine, as he wanted to create a film that discarded the dark, heavy mood of Kipling’s stories and instead embraced the delight that could be wrought from a medley of animal characters. The joy that infused the movie’s score with a playful spirit is one of the key elements adapter and director Mary Zimmerman strove to maintain in her new musical production.

The show, produced in association with Chicago’s Goodman Theatre, features seven songs from the Disney film including “The Bare Necessities” by Terry Gilkyson, never-before-heard songs by the award-winning Sherman Brothers, and more. “It’s going to be wonderful for the audience because they’ve never heard these songs before,” Sherman says. Music Director and Orchestrator Doug Peck has incorporated Indian sounds and underscoring based on themes from the film, as well as Indian ragas and dance music.

Peck believes that the music will prove even more powerful onstage than in the movie, especially as the production includes onstage musicians who will be encouraged to improvise throughout the run. “In the theatre, you are in the same acoustic space and can sometimes see the player or players creating the underscoring,” he says. “You are inherently more aware of the music, which can sometimes function on a more unconscious level on film. In some ways, I function both as arranger/orchestrator and editor helping players maintain a consistency that the cast can dance to, but also a freedom to explore their improvs from show to show.” The instrumentation consists of traditional western instruments such as a piano and drum set, as well as Indian snake trumpets, Carnatic violin, sitar, veena, tablas, ghattam, dholak, dhol, and other Indian percussion. Much of the Indian essence that Peck has infused into the score derives from the trip the creative team took to India.

The songs from the movie invite this added flavor, as each already has its own unique musical style that corresponds to the various species of animals. For instance, King Louie the Orangutan was conceived as a jazzman, so his number, “I Wanna Be Like You,” naturally fit as a swing piece.

The Sherman Brothers incorporated elements of Kipling’s stories and introduced whimsy and lightness to them, as per Disney’s instructions. Hathi, leader of the elephants, became Colonel Hathi, an officer in the British Raj who leads the militaristic “Colonel Hathi’s March.” The song plays with elephants’ natural galumph. As Sherman says, “It was all borne out of Walt’s desire for us to have fun.”

— Ali Leskowitz

Maria Aitken Brings Family Fun to THE COCKTAIL HOUR

Our relationship with director Maria Aitken goes back to 2007 with her production of Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps, which moved on to Broadway and ran for nearly 800 performances. Fortunately she appears to reciprocate our love, and we've since brought her back to the Huntington for critically acclaimed productions of Educating Rita (2011), Private Lives and Betrayal (2012). At the first rehearsal for Private Lives, Maria even quipped that she "might as well toss a mattress in the corner of the rehearsal room and stay here for a while*." We're ecstatic to welcome her back to our stage once again to present A.R. Gurney's The Cocktail Hour this season.

Outside of work as a director, Maria is an accomplished comedienne, having appeared in more Noël Coward plays than any other actress, and we're excited to have her bring that unique sensibility to The Cocktail Hour. The play tells the story of a playwright named John, who interrupts his parents' daily cocktail hour ritual to announce that he has written a pseudo-autobiographical about the family. Naturally, this news is received with mixed reactions -- and lots of alcohol. The play is a thinly-veiled allegory for playwright A.R. Gurney's actual relationship with his family, to the point that he promised them that as long as they were still alive, he would never, ever let the play be produced anywhere near the Buffalo near (where they resided). And if that uncomfortably-close-to-home-meta-ness weren't enough, the character of John mentions at one point having had a play produced at...the Boston University Theatre.

It might sound a little heavy -- and there is certainly some drama! -- but we actually like to think of The Cocktail Hour as an American comedy of manners. It has much more in common with Noël Coward than Arthur Miller, but whereas Coward's characters and worlds are distinctly British, Gurney's play takes place right here in the Northeast. Plus, John's upper-class family happens to be avid theatregoers, so we think our audience will enjoy seeing a version of their own lives portrayed on stage. Allegorically, of course. Unless the lampooning hits too close to home, in which case it was entirely coincidental. We swear.

Here's Artistic Director Peter DuBois discussing the show, and gushing even more over the wonderful Maria Aitken:

The Cocktail Hour plays Nov. 15 - Dec. 15, 2013 at the Avenue of the Arts / BU Theatre.

*In reference to the fact that rehearsals for Betrayal would be starting just over six months later. Also, just to be clear, we do in fact provide our visiting artists with more than just a mattress in the corner of the rehearsal room. Unless that's something they specifically request, of course.

I Believe In THE POWER OF DUFF

The Power of Duff marks the return of playwright Stephen Belber to the Huntington, following 2005's Carol Mulroney (the first production of ours to feature Johanna Day, who has since become a favorite of many of our audience members). Directed by our fearless leader Peter DuBois, The Power of Duff tells the story of a news anchor in Rochester named Charlie Duff who offers up a prayer on-air in honor of his recently deceased father, which in turn spins the community into a frenzy. So naturally, he keeps doing it. He soon finds himself at the center of a cult of (media) personality, while simultaneously  trying to win back his estranged wife and son, neither of whom is particularly fond of Charlie's newfound spirituality. Peter worked with Stephen Belber on the show's world premiere at New York Stage & Film in the summer of 2012, and Stephen has been working hard on sharpening and honing the script for this next iteration.

At its core, The Power of Duff is the story of a desperate man's attempt to reconnect with something in the face of loss. One of the things that makes it so compelling is its multifaceted exploration of faith. The play is very much grounded in the present day, fully aware of the political climate of the country, and looks at the value and function of faith from many different perspectives. The initial prayer that sets the story off is not overtly religious by any means; Charlie himself invokes the Big G a few times, but he is hardly pious. Rather, it's a communal call to unite people together under something greater than their individual selves. Or, it's not, but that's part of what makes the story so captivating. It investigates the relationship between spirituality and religion, and the powers of community and belief.

And? It's hilarious. Seriously. The interactions between various the big-headed personalities of the newsroom where Charlie works are well worth the price of admission alone. One of my personal favorite little bits is the character of Ron Kirkpatrick, a reporter on the show who covers all kinds of bizarre and off-kilter human interest pieces on location, and only ever appears on video (it being a play about a TV news channel, there is a lot of really fascinating video projection work going on onstage as well). It's kind of like Anchorman meets The Newsroom times As Good As It Gets divided by About A Boy. Except not at all -- but admit it, you're intrigued.

Here's Peter DuBois discussing the show: