wow! it’s WOW Fest ‘25
Using collaboration and group conceptualization to make Tale Travelers with Blindspot Collective and how the show is going!
marketing materials made by Shellina Hefner!
Our initial conversations for Tale Travelers were based around a few things: we wanted something made for kids that could also be really fun for adults, we wanted something interactive, and we wanted something that was filled with wonder and whimsy. Alongside Shellina Hefner and Hannah Frederick, I brainstormed different ideas that would fulfill all these wants. Books, reading, libraries, the feeling of jumping into a story headfirst. Together, we agreed that an interactive storybook was the winning idea.
Access to knowledge is actively being stripped. Instilling the idea of autonomy, choice, and the power of education into this show was non-negotiable. As an educator, I have seen a rapid decline in the ability to understand, analyze, and even comprehend text. Making reading interesting and engaging to the children in your community is everyone’s job. Art and literature is so accessible to anyone and a HUGE part of that accessibility is our public libraries. While its not productive to give that entire spiel to a child, we still wanted to create a show that lived at the intersection of interaction, literature, and autonomy.
Reading is tangible and cerebral. We wanted to consider what it would look like for the book itself to be the setting. The show quickly expanded to an entire library. Where the audience is the protagonist, exploring different popular stories that have come to life in an effort to find their place in the library. With the help of Blindspots’ Executive Artistic Director, Blake McCarty, we got to work and started coming up with a plan.
collage for Tale Travelers made by me!
We tossed around a lot before landing where we did and presented Tale Travelers to the La Jolla Playhouse. We considered a version of this experience that was like an epic: one hero fights her way back to her book with the help of a trusty bookworm, she encounters unusual challenges and needs the audiences help. We also considered a version where large books could be opened by audience members to reveal a story within them. Overall, one thing remained the same, The Bookworm, the steward of the the library, the trusted presence that led our audience through the experience. The Bookworm came with the library and expanded our story to include books in the public domain.
We then reached out to a group of extremely talented artists (Josiah Lopez, Emmalias, Nathan Nonhof, and Sashank Kanchustambam) to help us devise which stories and characters were the best to compliment our show. These sessions where spent mainly in discussion or in prompted writing time. We talked a lot about WHY reading is important, WHY libraries are important. WHY we chose to use books in the public domain.
a photo from our workshop! look at how cute we are!
After a lot more distilling and winnowing and refining and editing, we landed on something really fun. An experience where the audience dons the active role of a character that has “fallen” out of their book. Led by our trustworthy Bookworm, they travel through different books and meet new (or familiar) faces to find where they belong. An exciting adventure with a worthwhile ending, that I can’t tell you until you see the show for yourself!
To catch our show and many others apart of the La Jolla Playhouse WOW Festival you can visit: https://lajollaplayhouse.org/wowfestival/?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwhr6_BhD4ARIsAH1YdjA1-Fj8Ry0BAA8nzhWfAumPjVhmkM0uv_SYkAvYkpiK2qWuM-3PgIkaAgVwEALw_wcB
to buy tickets (sorry it looks terrible I have not fully figured out this website yet!). Show details, ticket prices, times and dates can all be found through that link. We would love to have you!
After all, everyone belongs at the library :)