A Wrinkle In Time with Madeleine L’Engle and the Rest of Us
Written for the S&S by Scoundrel Society member and Friend of the Theatre Howard Allen
This famous, famous story makes a journey that is as old as time. Literally. The long journey taken through galaxies, looking for her famous scientist father, makes 13-year-old Meg Murry a hero like Odysseus in The Odyssey (800 B.C.E.) or Luke Skywalker in Star Wars (1977). But L’Engle’s book came out to millions of fans in 1962, well ahead of Luke.
Meg Murry learns from her maybe-supernatural neighbors (Mrs Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which) that her father disappeared because tesseracts -- folds in space and time that allow for travel between planets and galaxies -- are actually real. So of course, Meg and her neighbors decide she needs to go “tessering” those wrinkles in time herself and find her father. Mathematics and science are a specialty of the Murry family so Meg and the Mrs. Team take her genius younger brother, Charles Wallace, and friend Calvin along through time and space.
Nothing makes this adventure more fun for audiences of all ages than taking this kind of journey live and in our theatre with the performers. The Scoundrel & Scamp Theatre always uses the imagination of their audience to help make the story come to life and they will on this adaptation of the book by James Sie.
You will join our team of actors and designers to visit the Orion Belt and planets like Camazotz, Uriel, and Ixchel and places like the Happy Medium’s Cave, a bizarre prison, and Home of the Black Thing Beast. The fantasy worlds, young heroes and powerful forces of Light and Darkness will entertain all ages. Dawn McMillan directs this production, weaving together the novel, her own imagination, and the imagination of the audience.
Madeleine L’Engle almost did not get A Wrinkle in Time published because the supernatural ideas, time travel, and brilliant young characters all together were way ahead of their time. L’Engle was a very precocious child herself --- writing her first story at age 5 and starting her journaling at age 8. She went to school in Europe as her father was a foreign correspondent. In 1942, back in the United States and living in New York City, she met actor Hugh Franklin when she appeared in the play The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov, and she married him on January 26, 1946. Together, they began a family.
She and her young family took a 10-week camping journey themselves in 1959. That journey helped inspire her most famous book. She had decided to stop her then-difficult writing career just before the trip, but of course, in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, she wrote dozens of books and articles.
In a 2012 survey of School Library Journal readers, A Wrinkle in Time was voted the best children's novel after Charlotte's Web. In 2013, a crater on Mercury was named after L'Engle.
We hope you enjoy this production of A Wrinkle in Time!