DISNEY BRINGS DREAMS TO NOMA

With a long history of blockbuster-style outreaches going back to the King Tut exhibit in the 1970s, the New Orleans Museum of Art is currently drawing families (and a few serious art students) from across the South for a show devoted to one of the greatest myth-makers of all time. The current Dreams Come True: Art of the Classic Fairy Tales from the Walt Disney Studio, runningthrough March 14, makes a convincing case that there's plenty of art behind the entertainment.


 
The exhibition of sketches, drawings, paintings and actual bits of animation going back even earlier than Walt Disney's first animated feature - which was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, of course - also brings together some clever syncronicities. New Orleans is the only city in North America to get the collection, featuring more than 600 rarely seen original artworks that brought legendary fairy tales to the screen, including Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast. The show also just happens to coincide with the opening of Disney's new animated feature The Princess and the Frog, which just happens to be set in a luminous New Orleans filled with Jazz in the 1920s.
 
"Change and adaptability have been essential characteristics of classic fairy tales as they have moved from their oral roots to written versions to cinematic revisions," explains Lella E. Smith, creative director of the Walt Disney Animation Research Library. "Walt Disney felt it was possible to translate the ancient fairy tale into its modern equivalent without losing the lovely patina and the flavor of its once-upon-time quality."
 
In addition to the omnipresent Disney party line about dreams coming true, the show is also (especially for lovers of American cinema) a mini-history of animation process. Though hardly aimed at film geeks, the various written narratives posted beside art make it clear just how many roads animation has traveled since "Uncle Walt" began sketching in the 1920s. The sheer look of the recent fairy tales - like Beauty and the Beast, for instance - makes it clear that the impact of computer imagery has spilled over from now-partnering Pixar and its non-fairy tale creations like Toy Story into the Disney bread and butter.
 
Visitors to the exhibition will encounter themed rooms showcasing artwork related to specific animated features. Arranged chronologically by year of release, the rooms will feature, in order: Silly Symphony shorts, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and The Princess and the Frog. Short film clips will accompany the artwork to demonstrate how individual sketches and paintings lead to a finished cinematic masterpiece. 
 
One additional element that sets Dreams Come True apart from the typical art exhibit - or even the typical museum show - is the huge amount of collaborative effort involved. Artists work alone, typically, that loneliness and the resulting megalomania being a large part of the myth that surrounds so many legendary artists. There is no working alone around animation, with the millions of individual images required by the finished product. If anything, collaboration at places like Disney and Pixar has only increased over the years, as the more "artistic" specialists had to find ways to work creatively alongside others whose mastery was primarily technical. It's almost a shock, therefore, to see a sketch for Beauty and the Beast, credited in museum tradition to "Andreas Deja, German, born 1957," or a gouache for The Little Mermaid credited to "Glen Keane, American, born 1954." 
 
If the Dreams Come True has a message - a kind of gentle axe to grind - it's reminding us with and without subtlety that the work of Disney animators over the greater part of the 20th century does indeed qualify as real art - even when it was the otherwise dreaded "art by committee."  
 
"Disney understood that the screen version must perceive and emphasize the moral intent and values upon which great persistent fairy tales are found," offers Smith. "The challenge is to give visual form to the characters and places that comprise the story."
 
Founded in 1910 by Isaac Delgado, the New Orleans Museum of Art in City Part at the end of broad Esplanade Avenue houses more than 30,000 art objects encompassing 4,000 years of world art. Works from the permanent collection, along with continuously changing temporary exhibitions, are on view in the Museum's 46 galleries Wednesdays from noon to 8 p.m. and Thursdays to Sundays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information on the Disney exhibition and other current and upcoming NOMA shows, go to www.noma.org.



ALLEY LOOKS AHEAD TO 'WONDERLAND'
 
Thanks to a creative partnership with the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, Houston's own Alley Theatre is bringing us the world premiere of Frank Wildhorn's latest musical, Wonderland. To hear Alley artistic director Gregory Boyd tell us about "Alice's New Musical Adventure," the show opening here Jan. 15 is several steps removed from the Lewis Carroll story that gave the world so many variations, including an iconic Disney animated film and a typically star-studded TV mini-series by Irwin Allen. And Boyd should know, because he wrote the book with lyricist Jack Murphy and is the show's director.
 
1. The Alley is certainly not new to national attention for its bold productions, but what is new and most exciting to you about this musical?
 
GB: Any new piece brings it own particular excitements.  This is such a fresh young cast of amazing performers, led by Janet Dacal, who is a joy to work with, watch and for all of us to write for. They are all extraordinary performers.
 
2. Here's a story that's about Alice and a looking glass and a trip to Wonderland, but it apparently ISN'T "Alice in Wonderland." Since you are writing the book for this music as well as directing it starting in Tampa, how do you see the relationship of this new show to the classic tale?
 
GB: I'm not the only writer.  Frank and Jack and I had the idea some years back and this was the time we got together to do it.  Frank's music and Jack's lyrics and the book that we are creating are all 'dreaming' of Alice in Wonderland, but through the sensibility of a modern woman.
 
3. After the likes of Disney in animation and Irwin Allen on TV, we the audience expect to be transported somewhere visually, not just told we're going. How would you describe the design elements and projected scenery that help us enter this fantasy world?
 
GB: The play takes place all in one night - one moment of one night, really - at a rooftop party in a big city - and all that our Alice is experiencing, in her love life, her family life, her professional life (she's a writer), filter up in her dreamscape.  The scenic elements try to support this idea without overwhelming it - and the projection design is there to enhance the dream nature of the event.
 
4. From what I've been told, this show is opening in Tampa then moving to Houston at the Alley. What has to happen - what do you expect will happen - between it closing there and opening here?
 
GB: Since it's a new musical, we will continue to work on it.  When we premiered Jekyll & Hyde during my first season at the Alley, every performance, literally, was different.  A dozen songs went in and out of that particular score, characters were dropped and others created - it was wild fun.  There are many ideas in the creators' brains on WONDERLAND, and I'm certain that we will be 'transforming' the show throughout its run in both cities. 
 
5. Are there special joys, or perhaps special challenges, in directing a work you yourself have written? How do you get the "distance" from the words to make the tough decisions directors sometimes have to make?
 
GB: As I said, there are three writers - so we all share the ideas and we all try to be as helpful/critical as we can be.  The design team on this production, and the music department too are all hugely smart, talented and inspired individuals - with many, many shows' worth of experience on Broadway and other theatre centers - and a large part of the delight is in marshalling everyone's talent and contributions into the show. 
 
6. WONDERLAND is clearly trying to appeal to adults and young people alike. How do you go about this? And might this be a chance to "evangelize" young audiences more used to Facebook, YouTube and Twitter than to an evening in the theater?
 
GB: I don't think that's true.  Jekyll, Treasure Island, Civil War, Leading Ladies, An American in Paris were all premieres and had a large following of young audiences.  This one certainly is a family show - but I'm hoping it's smart enough  to appeal to the very discerning ear of a practiced theatre-goer too. The score, of course, is a treat for anyone with ears.  The Alley has a younger audience than most US theatres.  This show will have a very broad appeal, I have no doubt.