You’re a Wizard Monkey, Harry.
A big chunk of my year so far has been dedicated to a project of epic proportions.
Magic Smoking Monkey Theatre is putting on a production of all eight Harry Potter movies condensed into 90-minutes. Not only did I adapt the script from the movies, but I am also going to be playing Ronald Bilius Weasley in the show which opens on December 7th.
How did this all come about?
Well, for those who don’t know MSMT, they are a theatre company that take cult or classic movies and stage them as a comedic production which usually runs about an hour. Previous works include Plan 9 from Outer Space, The Star Wars Trilogy in one hour, and The One Hour Lord of the Rings.
Last year after appearing in MSMT’s “It’s a Wonderful Life”, Donna Northcott the company’s Artistic Director, and myself found ourselves in front of a DVD collection which included the Potter movies. I had wanted to write a Monkey show since I first worked with them in 2008. When Donna mentioned her plan to do Harry, I had to jump in.
“Let me help you write it,” I said.
Due to Donna actually having stuff to do, I ended up tackling the whole thing myself, with some helpful suggestions along the way. I began on Tuesday, February 7th, and with a few breaks, missteps and rewrites along the way completed it on Tuesday, October 9th.
When setting about writing this I knew it was important to do two things; 1) Keep every line of dialogue accurate to the movies. 2) Make sure I preserved Harry’s overall story arc across the eight films.
My rules were simple, I could cut extraneous lines, scenes and words, and bolt different scenes together. I would not, however, paraphrase or re-write any lines of dialogue. The Monkey cast will then do our magic with improvisation, ad-libs and inappropriate inflection.
It’s going to be a lot of work and a tonne of fun. Hope you can make it out.
Performances will be Friday December 7th, 8th, 14th and 15th at Lindenwood University’s black box theatre.
The Monkey Sanctuary 