Little Prince (2023)
The Little Prince
By Rick Cummins and John Scoullar from the book by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
November-December 2023
Theatreworks Colorado Springs
Cast
Little Prince: Sean Ahmed Sharif
Aviator: Prentiss Benjamin
Rose and Others: Kaley Corinaldi
Fox and Others: Colton Pratt
Puppeteer: Ellie Myers
Scenographer: Scott Penner
Lighting Designer: Jennifer Fok
Puppet and Props Designer/ Puppet Director: Katy Williams
Composer and Sound Designer: Mark Arnest
Assistant Scenographer: Amanda Gladu
Kaley Corinaldi: nominated for a Henry Award, Best Supporting Actress in a Play, Colorado Theatre Guild
Colton Pratt: nominated for a Henry Award, Best Supporting Actor in a Play, Colorado Theatre Guild
Audience responses
Beautiful, heartfelt portrayal of a well known and loved story. The actors were phenomenal. The puppetry was wonderful. The costumes and set were beautiful. I loved this play so much. Going to see it a second time this weekend.
A lovely production, very faithful to the book. Casting, lighting, sound design, and staging were all excellent, as usual. The puppets were amazing!
Stellar performance! Great acting and the puppets brought this beautiful story to life. Truly enjoyable experience. Thank you!
Talent. Heart. Outstanding.
Excellent in every way. Very creative how they portrayed travel among the planets. I came right home and bought tickets for next weekend's performance!
The puppets were marvelous (especially the fox and the caterpillars) and the actors all did a great job. The ending seemed somewhat ambiguous, but I'm okay with that. The play made me think which is one of the main purposes of art, right?
The enchantment of puppetry will help tell a traditional tale in a nontraditional way.
In Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s classic 1943 novella, “The Little Prince,” an aviator who has crashed in the Sahara Desert meets a little prince who loves a rose from a distant world. As the duo goes on an adventure to other planets, the prince utters the book’s famous quote: “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eyes.”
Theatreworks will mount a 90-minute adaptation of the 1943 tale meant for all ages. It runs through Dec. 17 at Ent Center for the Arts.
Some of the show’s major roles are played by actors — Prentiss Benjamin plays the aviator and Sean Ahmed Sharif plays the prince — while two other actors and a puppeteer (Kaley Corinaldi, Colton Pratt and Ellie Myers) work together as the rose and fox puppets, under the direction of puppet designer Katy Williams. The show also will feature object work, where objects come to life, and shadow puppetry to bring the book’s illustrations to life.
“I was interested in the prince’s ability to form friendships that go beyond the human,” said director Caitlin Lowans.
At the emotional core of the story is the relationship between the two central characters, and how the aviator has been told all his life to forego creativity and focus on something more real and solid.
“There’s so much in the text about the bonds we form and how we need to give up a bit of ourselves to be vulnerable to others, to discover what love can be,” said Lowans, Theatreworks’ artistic director. “Shared puppet work is collaborative and vulnerable. If two people play the fox, they have to listen and respond to each other. The shared collaborative work enforces the relational message at the core of the show.”
The use of puppets also pays homage to the book’s famous quote and the ability of puppeteers to give sentience to an inanimate object.
“We’ve done something beyond what is invisible to the eye,” Lowans said. “The eye says that’s just crumpled paper on a stick, but somehow we’ve done something past that reality and into something more true. It has life because we believe it has life. Relationships are important because we believe them to be important. Puppetry is deeply woven into what the show means.”
Blending puppets into a show is what theater is all about for Lowans. It’s a live theatrical event that couldn’t be captured in a film or TV show. There’s something ephemeral about watching puppeteers breathe together or seeing a puppet and actor together on stage.
“The conscious brain knows the words are coming out of the mouth of the actor, yet when the puppet moves we’re transfixed by that rose or that fox,” she said. “It’s that ability to reawaken our capacity for imagination, for metaphor, to see something that isn’t human as real and worthy of care and worthy of empathy. Those are the emotions I want an audience to feel while having a good time.”
Photo credit: Isaiah Downing
