The Arts

Springbrook Students Bring

“The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” to Life

by Carly Evans

This year, Springbrook Middle School students are performing the play “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.” This year’s play was chosen because the director wanted to do something that involved stage combat and the theme of good versus evil. She likes to offer different experiences for her students with each play.

The story, “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” is about four children in the 1940s who lost their parents and go to stay with a professor in the country. The professor’s house is really old, creaky, and cool. They explore the house, and Lucy—the youngest of the four children—finds a wardrobe. When she opens it, she discovers a portal to a magical place called Narnia.

Lucy meets other people in Narnia but ends up going back through the wardrobe. When she tells her siblings about the other world, they don’t believe her. Eventually, all four siblings go into the wardrobe and explore Narnia together. They go on various adventures, but one of the siblings makes some “not-so-good” choices. Then a big battle happens between Aslan and the White Witch. Narnia is always cold and a very scary place, so the four siblings help make Narnia good again.

Time in Narnia passes differently than in the human world. In Narnia, it has been years since they left, but when they go back through the wardrobe, only a little time has passed in the real world.

The play’s director, Emily Gifford, said the most challenging part of directing this play is that it takes place in two different worlds—Narnia and the human world. The actors also had to speak in British accents the entire time. There are six actual humans in the play, and the rest of the cast includes animals, creatures, kings, and queens.

Because the story takes place in England in the 1940s, the students had to work hard to get the perfect British accent and wear clothing that fit the time period. Gifford said what’s tricky about this play is that each actor has to learn how to portray a character that’s very different from their own life. “You have to act like something you never thought you would act like,” she explained.

Gifford said they bring the characters to life through lots of improv and drama games. They take a day to learn about their characters and practice acting like them before rehearsing. Some people don’t have speaking parts, but Gifford still works with them by giving each student a backstory to perform on stage. “We make sure everyone knows their character well and performs with confidence,” she said. “We work on their body language first, then their facial expressions.”

Gifford’s favorite scene to direct in this play is the second battle scene—and there are two battles in total. She says it’s her favorite but also the hardest to direct because so much happens on stage at once. There are 50 students in the show and nine small battles happening at the same time. “There’s a lot of stage combat, and I want the audience to see everyone,” she said. “While the battling is happening, some characters are also talking, and the timing between the fighting and the speaking has to be exact. There are people fighting, talking, and running around the stage, and even the stairs move while all this is happening—it’s really crazy!”

Her second favorite scene is probably the one with Lucy and the creature she meets when she first goes into the wardrobe—Mr. Tumnus. Mr. Tumnus is a faun and a good character. He is being blackmailed by the witch to do bad things. “He’s just a really fun character,” said Gifford. “Everyone loves him, and it’s the first time you really see Narnia and the lampposts.”

When it comes to costumes, props, and scenery, Gifford said she starts by focusing on the budget. “You have to decide what you want each scene to look like,” she explained. For example, Gifford needed a wardrobe and a bedroom set and had to figure out how the transition would work when someone goes through the wardrobe. “Will it spin and then they come out? Will it just turn once?” she said. Once she makes those decisions, she teaches the tech crew how to build and paint the sets. For costumes, they look at the script and decide what each character should wear.

To make the play both magical and serious, Gifford uses different background sounds and effects. “This play isn’t a musical—there’s no singing or dancing—but there is a celebratory dance at the very end when everything comes together, and everyone is happy again,” she said. “It’s a straight play, but we make it more dramatic with sound effects and audio.”

When asked how the movie differs from the play, Gifford explained, “If you do the full-length play, it would take about two hours, and you’d have to skip some parts. We do the middle school ‘abridged’ version, which means it’s condensed.” She likes to keep middle school plays about an hour and a half long—not too long and not too short. “Some people ask, ‘Why wasn’t this scene in it?’ and I tell them, ‘Well, you can’t fit the whole story into a one-and-a-half-hour play."

We hope you enjoyed the show!