The official blog of the Dramaturgy Department at Baltimore's CENTERSTAGE. For posts related to our current and upcoming shows, click the links to the right. Alternatively, you could begin at the beginning, and explore our posts in chronological order.
Fairy tales can come true, the old song goes; it can happen to you, apparently, if you’re young at heart. Whether one believes this hopeful sentiment, and regardless of the age of one’s internal organs, there’s no doubt that fairy tales have for the past couple of years — and into the foreseeable future — been coming pretty regularly to screens both big and small, achieving, you could say, at least the kind of quasi-truth that movies and television can concoct.
Kim Furano’s deft digest of the Grimm’s process, history, and agenda—program dramaturgy for Into the Woods at CENTERSTAGE and Westport Country Playhouse.
Do we shape stories, or do stories shape us? After going through much of my mammoth collection of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, I think it’s more often the latter. Fairy Tales, in their original non-Disneyesque glory, are dark and disturbing morality tales that have as much relevance today as they did when the Grimm brothers first started collecting them. Many of our ideas about horror, super heroes, science fiction, and even serial killers come from Fairy Tales. Some of them are so insightful on how people behave, that it’s simply stunning; but Hollywood doesn’t seem to care much about those stories…..
EVIDENCE
By Vivian Vande Velde
If the coach turned back into a pumpkin
And the coachman into a rat
And the footmen into mice,
One can only wonder
Why the glass slippers alone remained untouched by magic’s ebbing tide.
Obviously a set-up.
But by whom?
The fairy godmother’s ability
Didn’t extend beyond midnight.
And where would a cinder girl
Have ever gotten shoes like that?
Could they possibly have been a secret gift
From the stepmother,
Eager to get her out of the house,
Tired of her unrelenting goodness,
And beauty,
And cheerfulness
(not to mention all that singing)?
Illuminating Childhood: Portraits in Fiction, Film, and Drama by (Professor) Ellen Handler Spitz
Experiencing the phases of childhood through art
Gorgeous Grimm: 130 Years of Brothers Grimm Visual Legacy by Maria Popova
What evil stepmothers and conniving wolves have to do with understanding the future of reading.
“How Some Children Played at Slaughtering”
The pioneering collection of fairy tales published by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in the first half of the 19th century reflects both the romantic interest in the national past—that is, in the cultural origins and “childhood” of the German people—and the burgeoning efforts to create a literature tailored to the perceived needs of children. “How Some Children Played at Slaughtering” encompasses two stories included in the first edition of Grimms’ collection (vol. 1, 1812). The brothers’ decision to withdraw the tales from subsequent editions provides insights into the Grimms’ generic conception of the fairy tale and debates about appropriate reading material for children. The two stories themselves shed light on the ways in which adults construct ideas about childhood.
Source: Grimm, Jacob, and Wilhelm Grimm. “How Some Children Played at Slaughtering.” In The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, translated by Jack Zipes, 600-01. Expanded 3rd ed. New York: Bantam, 2003. Original German: Grimm, Jacob, and Wilhelm Grimm. “Wie Kinder Schlachtens miteinander gespielt haben.” In Kinder- und Hausmärchen gesammelt durch die Brüder Grimm, Vol. 1, 101-03. Berlin: Realschulbuchhandlung, 1812.
How Some Children Played at Slaughtering
I
In a city named Franecker, located in West Friesland, some young boys and girls between the ages of five and six happened to be playing with one another. They chose one boy to play a butcher, another boy to play was to be a cook, and a third boy was to be a pig. Then they chose one girl to be a cook and another girl her assistant. The assistant was to catch the blood of the pig in a little bowl so they could make sausages. As agreed, the butcher now fell upon the little boy playing the pig, threw him to the ground, and slit his throat open with a knife, while the assistant cook caught the blood in her little bowl.
A councilman was walking nearby and saw this wretched act. He immediately took the butcher with him and led him into the house of the mayor, who instantly summoned the entire council. They deliberated about this incident and did not know what they should do to the boy, for they realized it had all been part of a children’s game. One of the councilmen, an old wise man, advised the chief judge to take a beautiful red apple in one hand and a Rhenish gulden in the other. Then he was to call the boy and stretch out his hands to him. If the boy took the apple, he was to be set free. If he took the gulden, he was to be killed. The judge took the wise man’s advice, and the boy grabbed the apple with a laugh. Thus he was set free without any punishment.
II
There once was a father who slaughtered a pig, and his children saw that. In the afternoon, when they began playing, one child said to the other, “you be the little pig, and I’ll be the butcher.” He then took a shiny knife and slit his little brother’s throat.
Their mother was upstairs in a room bathing another child, and when she heard the cries of her son, she immediately ran downstairs. Upon seeing what had happened, she took the knife out of her son’s throat and was so enraged that she stabbed the heart of the other boy, who had been playing the butcher. Then she quickly ran back to the room to tend to her child in the bathtub, but while she was gone, he had drowned in the tub. Now the woman became so frightened and desperate that she did not allow the neighbors to comfort her and finally hung herself. When her husband came back from the fields and saw everything, he became so despondent that he died soon after.
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, “”How Some Children Played at Slaughtering” [Children’s Literature],” in Children and Youth in History, Item #113, http://chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/primary-sources/113 (accessed February 4, 2012). Annotated by Donald Haase
