With our theaters dark due to the pandemic, our Wallis Studio Ensemble decided to create an eight episode online series called “Fairyland Foibles.” The goal of these early career actors was to offer a fun mashup of some classic fairytales through a new lens. What if the characters could take control of their own narrative and challenge some of the tropes and stereotypes?
Director Madeleine Dahm shared her reflections on the project –
“The final episode of Fairyland Foibles aired this weekend to record numbers. It has been such an incredible journey to put together this 4 hour, 8 part episodic digital play, over the past three months. With hundreds of people voting each week to determine story and plot, and tuning in to watch each episode.
We could never have anticipated the hours of rehearsing, filming, editing, and music scoring that lay ahead of us after creating episode one, or where the story would end up taking us. But after that first episode we realized the potential, and vowed each week to make it better, and to take the zoom platform and our post production skills to the max.
The story also let us to places we never thought we would go when we began talking about it three months prior. I wanted to share with you the thoughts about the experience of creating this story, from one of the actors and a co- writer of Fairyland Foibles:
“It’s hard to put into words what a journey this has been. Thank you all for letting us make you laugh during this time of widespread grief. Thank you to everyone who voted in the polls and said ‘we want to tell this story with you.’ We are living through a powerful moment in history. It has been so inspiring to see people rise up en masse and say ‘this government is no longer going to tell us WHO we are or HOW we tell our stories’. It has been so inspiring to see this same movement within theatres. That’s what we wanted Fairyland Foibles to reflect. We are digging up white supremacy by the roots and planting the seeds for a better world driven by compassion and empathy.” – Tiana Randall Quant
You can see all 8 episodes on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/watch/WallisStudio/1001400846985831/