armadillodarling - Tumblr blog

armadillodarling · 17 days ago

Text

My Dream Version of "The Nutcracker": An Outline

@florallychaotic This one's for you! Merry Christmas, and thank you for taking an interest. <3

For a while I've been really taken by the idea of doing an adaptation of The Nutcracker where the protagonist (Clara/Marie/Masha, Clara for my purposes) is working class. There a couple adaptations that play with this a little bit-- a Soviet animated short film which I felt was cute but didn't really live up to the premise's potential, and Par Isberg's version for the Royal Swedish Ballet, which seems to be a cross between a more traditional Nutcracker and a completely different children's book that's popular in Sweden, whose protagonists are a pair of young children. But both of these adaptations see a servant character take center stage, which is really compelling to me. In a lot of Nutcrackers, Clara is a girl or young woman from a wealthy family, who already lives a life of great comfort and even glamor. I think it would be fun to add an extra level of escapism to the story by having a girl who has very little and works very hard be the one to get transported to a land of romance and decadence and adventure. So I'm outlining here my idea for a ballet version of the story, as I picture it in my head. It irons out some of the troubles I've had with other adaptations in the past (the racism/orientalism in act II for instance, as well as the problems of "if Clara is the protagonist, why is she so often sidelined in act II?" and "hey, why does the plot basically go away in act II?"). I've pulled some inspiration from my favorite adaptations of the ballet, as well as the two adaptations mentioned above, and a little bit from E.T.A. Hoffman's original short story.

Disclaimer: I don’t know much about dance, so if you do and you read this and think “that would never work,” please know it’s because I’m not an expert and this is just something I did for fun.

Double Disclaimer: Oops, this outline I made for fun is eight pages long. Full outline under the cut.

ACT I

The Overture opens the show as it usually does. It’s Victorian times, and I’m thinking late Victorian so that all of the fancy guests we see in act I can be wearing those beautiful gowns with bustles and big leg-o-mutton sleeves. The set is glamorous (we are in the home of a very rich family at Christmastime) but grounded in Reality.

We see the Stahlbaum household preparing for their annual Christmas party. Well, actually, the Stahlbaums' household staff is preparing for the party. The housemaids are cleaning and decorating. The focus is on one housemaid in particular: Clara, our protagonist.

Clara is a young woman, and played by a principal dancer. I'm sorry, I just don't like kid Claras as much as I do adult ones. They always feel weird to me. Clara, in my opinion, should always be the star of the show and do the bulk of the dancing, which demands a ballerina who can carry a whole show with her performance. Besides, this Clara has to be a grown-up (not old by any means, in my mind I picture her character being late teens early twenties, although the ballerina who plays her could be any age) because she has a romantic subplot and a job.

Clara's job sucks. :) Across the top half of the first act we see her getting bossed around a lot, by her employers as well as by the other housemaids. The Stahlbaums don't notice Clara at all until they have a mess that needs to be cleaned up, and that task always falls to her. The two other maids pass off undesirable tasks to her to avoid doing them themselves. People are constantly dropping/spilling/breaking things during the Christmas party and snapping at Clara to clean them up (this serves two purposes: it tells us how much and how hard Clara is working while her wealthy employers carelessly party it up, and it also gives Clara an excuse to remain onstage to observe and react to the unfolding plot).

We also see that the Stahlbaums' two children, Fritz and Marie (yes, we have Marie in addition to Clara, but we'll get to that later) kind of have free reign to prank and beleaguer Clara. They don't hate her or anything, but they get a rise out of making her life harder: breaking things on purpose so she has to clean them, pulling on her apron and skirt, Fritz trying to trip her, etc. Just shitty rich kid stuff, and they mostly get away with it (maybe get a performative finger wag or scolding, but that's it).

Clara deals with this largely by having a sort of whimsical internal life. Her superiors would probably describe her as having her head in the clouds, but the audience should get a sense that she is a person whose dreams and imagination buoy her through a kind of tough, lonely life. The first time we see her, she is dreaming (or daydreaming at least)-- imagining something magical while she's supposed to be setting up for the party (many productions do this by having a dancer in Clara's act two costume behind a backlit scrim while she dreams about it in the foreground, and I like this! I'd take it further and have her imagining an entire tableau of some kind that foreshadows act II.) Someone snaps her out of it, though, and tells her to get back to work. She prepares for the party and admits all the guests.

The party proceeds as usual, with some fun little dances from the party guests and maybe even the maids. Then Herr Drosselmeyer arrives with a big flourish.

Drosselmeyer is a fun character (pompous, flamboyant, eccentric, spooky, a true magician, wears an eye patch), but unlike in some adaptations where he's a more kindly figure, here he's our antagonist. And that's not entirely his fault! Drosselmeyer is here because he has a favorite niece, Marie, and he wants to give her the best Christmas present ever, but this damn housemaid keeps getting in his way.

To clarify: in my adaptation, the magic is all real, and Dross knows that. He knows there's a prince trapped in the Nutcracker, and he believes that Marie, his 10 year old niece, should the one to break the spell, free him, and go on the subsequent adventure to a magical world. He's maybe a little misguided in this belief though, because as we have seen, Marie is spoiled and nasty. He doesn't think that though. He thinks she's the best. Clara, on the other hand, well... Dross has some period-typical classism going on. A housemaid is nothing to him.

We should kick off that animosity right away by having Clara do something to minorly inconvenience him, like bump into him while he's doing something magestical and magicianly and throw off his groove. Which he, being pompous, takes very personally.

He still does some cool magic tricks, though, and we still see his awesome life-sized mechanical dolls dance around (and because this is my dream version of the Nutcracker, these three have medieval stylings: the first is a jester, the second is a damsel fair, and the third is the black knight). Marie is particularly taken with these dolls, and assumes they are her gift, which means she is really upset when Dross gives her the Nutcracker as a present.

I don't think this is an ugly Nutcracker like in some productions-- I think he's glossy and good-looking (albeit with that kind of weird, toothy nutcracker face that they all have) but he is NOT what Marie wanted. And instead of her loving it and playing with it and keeping it away from Fritz like in most productions, in mine Dross is basically chasing her around the stage with it, trying to convince her to take it. He sells it up: oh look how handsome he is, just like a prince right, don't you think there's something magical about him Marie??? But she keeps refusing and refusing. The sequence ends with Marie getting really ticked off and throwing the Nutcracker on the floor, breaking it.

Dross is dismayed, he and Marie are both ushered offstage by a scolding Frau Stahlbaum, and who should Herr Stahlbaum ask to clean up the broken toy but our very own Clara?

Alone on the stage, Clara picks up the Nutcracker and puts him back together (Binding his broken arm back on with a hankie, as is tradition. I think he should even be seen wearing the hankie when he becomes life-sized later in the act, maybe as a handsome little cape.). We see her recognize something special in him that Marie simply could not. She dances with him (Not in that weird, rocking-a-baby way that she does in a lot of productions. That never make sense to me. He's not her baby, he's her handsome prince! She should do a little faux-waltz with him or something). Her little daydream is interrupted twice by raucous children from the party parading through, during which she has to put the Nutcracker down and pretend to be cleaning or something. At the end of it one of her fellow maids scolds her to get her head out of the clouds; she leaves the Nutcracker under the tree and rushes offstage.

After one more dance with the Stahlbaums and their guests, the party is over and the guests start to trickle out. Dross tries one more time to get Marie to take that Nutcracker, and her parents make her thank him, but she leaves it under the tree and we can tell she still doesn't want it. Dross takes it as a success and swoops offstage.

With all the guests gone, it's time for the Stahlbaums to go to bed, but someone's got to clean up the mess from the party. We see the task get handed down: from Frau Stahlbaum to Maid #1, from Maid #1 to Maid #2, and from Maid #2 to Clara. Our girl is left alone with her broom, to sweep up confetti and cookie crumbs.

But it's a lot of hard work! And it's been a long night of cleaning for her! So she falls asleep in a chair.

As she sleeps we see the first glimpses of the mice skittering about and making some yuletide mischief. But the clock striking midnight scares them away, and wakes up Clara. And right away she knows something's off.

For one thing, Dross is here doing magic. Clara hides from him behind the chair, and he doesn't see her, but perceives that she's there and, incorrectly, thinks that she's Marie finally playing along with his game.

Thinking that, he decides it's time to kickstart "Marie's" adventure. So he does his magic to shrink Clara down to toy size and possibly even summons the mice to start the battle.

Clara watches with wonder as the tree and the presents become enormous, and all the toys (dolls and tin soldiers and a big sad-looking teddy bear) come to life. The Nutcracker also comes to life, with an appropriate flourish. He is very gallant to Clara, and rallies the tin soldiers for battle.

The mice emerge, and the battle begins!

The battle is so classic, and one of my favorite parts of the show, so I'm not gonna touch it much. However, I think Clara should play a more active part in it than she usually does. She kept her broom when she got shrunk down, and now she's using it to beat up mice and protect the other toys. I like the thought of her and her Nutcracker fighting side-by-side.

When the Rat King shows up, I want him to be SCARY. He's gotta have three heads and the most tattered and spooky looking cape and a black crown with red gems in it. He's gotta be grizzly and gross and BOMBASTIC. His eyes should glow red like coals and he needs to have sharp yellow rat teeth and be at least a head taller than the Nutcracker and Clara. And maybe have a big cool sword.

When he and the Nutcracker fight, it's clear that the fight's not fair. It's a David and Goliath situation. So when the Rat overpowers Nutcracker, he really overpowers him. The audience (and Clara!) should really fear that he has killed him. And that's when Clara jumps to his defense, stands between him and the Rat brandishing her broomstick like "don't you dare touch him." And while the Rat laughs at her she bashes him on the fucking head with her broom and he fucking dies about it.

Once the defeated mice carry the fallen Rat King away, Clara tries and fails to wake up the Nutcracker, thinks he's dead, and, crying, gives his weird square nutcracker head a little kiss. Her kiss breaks the spell, and he becomes the Prince. They dance a joyous pas de deux together in the snowy pine forest.

It is imperative to me that the Prince adores and is delighted by Clara in a way that no one else in the first act is. We need to see it in his face and in his body language. It has to shine through. His enthusiasm and his care have to be a revelation in the face of all the first act characters' indifference/cruelty. This pas de deux has to be tender as hell.

The Waltz of the Snowflakes is exactly the same, no notes, no changes. The act ends with Clara and the Prince riding off to the Prince's kingdom in the Snow Queen's sleigh.

ACT II

The second act of most traditional Nutcrackers is so weird, and while I kind of love that about it, I do think it would be kind of neat to have at least a little of our plot from act I carry through act II. I'll explain in further detail in a minute.

I'm also making some purely cosmetic, self-indulgent changes. The Land of Sweets, for instance, is now the Land of Dreams-- an extension of Clara's rich inner life and reliance on imagination. Clara "has her head in the clouds," and so the Prince's castle is literally in the clouds.

The aesthetic is pastel celestial. The castle/scenery is made out of fluffy white clouds, the color palette is one of pale dawn blues/violets and sunset pinks, there's a lovely sickle moon and twinkly stars painted onto the backdrop, etc. Everything glitters with stardust, everything is very heightened and fantastical.

Clara and the Prince arrive in the land by way of a beautiful little flying sailboat that carries them through the sky to the castle. The characters that usher them in are not the traditional Christmas Angels, but the stars themselves (members of the corps de ballet dressed in sparkly silver outfits).

They enter the Palace of Dreams, and are greeted by the Sugar Plum Fairy and her court (Yes I know it's not the land of sweets anymore but it feels sacrilegious to not call her the Sugar Plum Fairy. Even if it doesn't make sense.) But someone else is here too...

Herr Drosselmeyer is here, and he is baffled and upset to find that Clara is the one rolling up to the Land of Dreams arm-in-arm with the Prince. Because he worked very hard and made a lot of magical preparations for Marie, his niece Marie, to be doing that very thing and now this annoying little housemaid is here instead!!! So what is going on with that?

I just realized while typing this that Drosselmeyer's problem is that he is the only character in this who knows he's in a story, but he thinks he's in a different story. He thinks he's in a more traditional telling of the Nutcracker, and he keeps trying to bend the story back to the way he wants/thinks it is supposed to go, but he can't, and it is frustrating him.

He expresses strong disappointment at this "mistake" but the Sugar Plum Fairy dismisses his fussing, because they have a hero now anyway, which is what they wanted, so it doesn't matter who ultimately saved the day. Clara freed the Prince from the evil spell and brought him back home, so she embraces Clara with open arms. (And she has some of her courtiers whisk Clara off the stage for a quick costume change).

The overarching plot of act II starts here, and it's basically a game of tug-of-war between the Sugar Plum Fairy and Drosselmeyer. Plum loves Clara and wants her to stay, Dross can't stand her and wants her gone. This will matter more as we get deeper into the act.

The Prince does his little reenactment of the battle and explains to the gathered court how he and Clara fought the Rat King, how Clara ultimately killed the Rat and broke the spell. At the end of his pantomime, right after the "I was saved!" flourish, he gestures to Clara who arrives onstage in a sweet new costume, all bedecked like a beautiful princess instead of a maid. She is radiant, the court celebrates, and Dross retreats to a sort of upper balcony on the set to pout about it.

Now come all the divertissements, and this is where we see the biggest change in act II. Rather than have each dance represent a nation (which in certain numbers can slip into racially insensitive territory), now each one is an effort by Plum or by Dross to either help or hinder Clara in some way. These two watch the proceedings from the balcony area (I'm thinking a sort of catwalk above the set, dressed up in that same cloud motif as the castle, where both dancers are visible and the audience can see them do their "magic" and influence the plot.)

The only exception to this is the "Spanish" dance, which I'm imagining as a sort of first celebratory dance with Clara, the Prince, and some citizens of the Land of Dreams. On that first trumpet note (bah-BAH!) a few dancers toss confetti into the air, some bring out tambourines, and they all do a saucy little peasant dance together.

Side note: While Sugar Plum's retinue is all fairies, it shouldn't be the fairies who dance this dance. I think the citizens of the Land of Dreams should be their own characters, dressed up in very fantastical costumes distinct from the fairies (although I'm not sure what I want them to look like just yet).

As the music tapers out, all the other dancers (including the Prince!) dance right off the stage, but as Clara goes to follow them Dross pops up in the catwalk and makes a magic gesture, and she freezes in her tracks. The lighting onstage changes, dimming to a hazy violet blue...

In place of the Arabian dance, we now have a dance with the Sand Man, who Dross summons to the stage to put Clara to sleep. The music for this number is so hypnotic and drowzy sounding, so I feel it's a good fit. I'm picturing a single, male character dancer dressed very mysteriously, perhaps in a sort of gauzy cape and tasseled night cap bedecked with a pattern of stars, and some kind of Venetian mask to conceal the upper half of his face. He spends the dance trying to sprinkle magic sand in Clara's eyes, she spends the dance resisting the pull of slumber. I think the choreography can still feature a lot of the cool lifts that people love and look for in the traditional staging.

In the end the Sand Man wins out and creeps off while Clara falls asleep right in the middle of the stage. Dross has also vanished, but up on the catwalk Plum appears. She sees Clara sleeping and, with a wave of her wand, changes the lighting onstage to something more golden and cheerful, and summons three friends to come and wake her up.

In place of the Chinese dance we now have three songbirds who dance on stage to wake Clara. The music for this variation is very flute-heavy, and flutes are used to represent birdsong in other ballets (like Sleeping Beauty's Bluebird pas de deux), so I thought this was a perfect fit. Plus I just love ballet costumes that feature feathers. I'm a sucker for birds, what can I say.

Clara wakes up and twirls around with the birds for a bit, then they fly offstage, leaving her refreshed and glad. But Dross, up on the catwalk again, can't be having that. He does a big stomp or something, and while the lighting stays the same this time, we are joined by three new dancers.

Instead of the Russian dance we have three goblins or beasties of some kind, who come to give Clara a fright. The choreography can literally stay exactly the same-- people expect something very specific out of this variation, and it's a crowd-pleaser for a reason! They (and I absolutely include myself in that they) love the jumps and the kicks and the leaps and all that, so it can stay. They can even do that fun thing I've seen where they pick up Clara and just sort of toss-pass her between them. But now the three or four dancers doing that are not dressed like Cossacks, they're wearing silly little monster costumes.

I am picturing them looking sort of like the guys from Where the Wild Things Are, although not as bulky so that the dancers can actually dance this difficult choreo. They shouldn't be actually scary, especially not to young audience members, they should be that sort of fun-scary, with fur and horns and big toothy grins.

And I think Clara picks up on that sense of raucous fun, she's maybe startled at first but then gets into it and finishes the dance with them, beaming. Which of course pisses Dross off and makes him storm away.

When the goblins leave the stage, Clara isn't scared anymore, but I think she is bewildered and a little out of breath, so the Sugar Plum Fairy sends her something sweet to calm her down.

I am keeping the pastoral dance with the little sheep. I'm sorry but I can't not include it, partly because I love it but also partly because I can't think of something else that would go well here, and sheep aren't really French or Dutch or whatever this variation is supposed to be. Sheep are universal, and they are also cute.

So Plum sends Clara some sheep (the sheep people count as they are nodding off to sleep, so we can keep with the Land of Dreams theming) played by younger dancers, maybe even child dancers. Four white ones and one black one, and they have little stars or spangles in their fleece to make them dreamier and more heightened. And instead of having a shepherdess, Clara acts as their shepherdess and leads them in a little dance.

This variation is slightly different than the others, though, because it is the only one where Dross tries to meddle with Plum's kindly magic. When the score takes on that kind of darker sound in the middle of the dance, he, as a last-ditch effort to scare Clara off, sends a wolf to menace her and the sheep. But she's not afraid and she shoos the wolf away, and for a while after that it seems like Dross has given up.

It is at this point that Prince catches back up with Clara (maybe miming a gentle, "hey, where have you been?" so that we know he just lost track of her and didn't abandon her to be magicked on). They both go upstage where a pair of thrones await them (this is partly just an excuse to let Clara sit for a little while-- she's danced most of the act!), and take a seat to enjoy the final divertissement, the dance of the polchinelles.

No Mother Ginger-- she's fun, but she just doesn't fit right in the Land of Dreams. Instead I think it would be fun to have dancers dressed as jesters or commedia del arte clowns. In my head I picture three men and three women dancing this in pairs somehow, but this could be played a variety of ways. Just some silly little guys doing a silly little dance.

The Waltz of the Flowers is next, and it stays exactly the same, except that now it is the Waltz of the Fairies and it is danced by the Sugar Plum Fairy and her retinue. (Clara and the Prince sit this one out too, either watching from their seats or offstage).

The Grand Pas de Deux is danced by Clara and the Prince, and it needs to be even more tender and joyous and brimming with romance than their pas de deux in the first act.

This also means that it is Clara who gets to dance the variation that typically goes to the Sugar Plum Fairy. Let her have her Princess Moment.

All seems to be well! But as Clara, the Prince, the Sugar Plum Fairy and the rest of the ensemble finish one final celebratory dance together, who should show up to interrupt the proceedings but Herr Drosselmeyer? He steps between Clara and everyone else and, before Plum or the Prince can stop him, casts one final spell. We hear the grandfather clock in the Stahlbaum's house chiming again, and the Land of Dreams and everyone and everything in it begins to vanish.

The Prince and Clara both should be DISMAYED by this. They try to reach one another but are pulled apart by the spell. They don't even get to say goodbye.

Amid a haze of smoke-machine fog the set changes from the Land of Dreams back to the Stahlbaum's parlor with the Christmas tree. We find Clara there, in the chair where we saw her fall asleep in the last act, back in her housemaid's dress (by virtue of the world's fastest backstage quick change). The chiming clock awakens her from what she thinks must be a dream. But when she looks around for the Nutcracker, she cannot find him anywhere.

The Stahlbaums come in and see her looking around for him, and reprimand her. So it's back to the same old same old, and we should see that Clara is kind of crushed by that. While the family begins their lovely Christmas morning activities, they hear a knock at the door, and send her to go answer it so that they can have their fun.

Clara, downtrodden but trying to rally and convince herself that she will at least have the consolation of a very beautiful dream to remember, does as she's told. When she opens the door, however, she lights up with joy again as her Prince steps inside.

Yes-- it was all real, and he has come to take her home. He offers his hand to her, she takes it, and as the final notes of the apotheosis play, they run out the door together, leaving the Stahlbaums behind.

That's right!!! No "it was all a dream" this time! Our girl gets to run right off the page with her Prince and go live a life of joy and magic with people who really care about her.

And that's all I've got. I'm not sure how it comes across on paper but I think if it were staged it could be truly fantastic. If you happen to know a professional ballet company, tell them to hire me.

8 notes · View notes