STAGE: The Twelve Dancing Princesses

When Anna commissioned me to write a script based on “The Twelve Dancing Princesses,” I had never even heard of the story. It is actually one of the Grimm’s fairy tales. It’s most recent rendition was an animated movie starring the doll Barbie (yucko). When I read the short version on line, I saw that the story had a lot of fun possibilities. I started trying to think of other characters that could be added to the original story. Since the plot involves the wearing out of many pairs of shoes, one of the first I added was a cobbler. I gave the soldier a sidekick and added goblins. After that, several elements of the tale tied together nicely. I had more fun with this story than I expected. After sending Anna a finished draft, she contacted me and said they had a smaller cast than they were hoping for. It wasn’t surprising that no boys signed up for a play about dancing princesses. As it stood, the production would only have eight princesses. Using an idea Anna had, I made some changes and it ended up adding some more fun to the story. The performance went exceptionally well. They even had a good crowd despite the small cast. They used music from the TV show “Pushing Daisies”—which was a perfect choice. One thing I do if I can is get character names from sources that end up being an inside joke for me. In this case, all the characters are named after famous dancers. The lead princess is named Isadora. The soldier who ends up being her love interest is Duncan. Isadora Duncan was a famous dancer. Anyway, the audience really liked it and it went over well.