20 November 2005

Q&A with Producer Charles

On the way home from the show, Charles had some questions about how the play he just saw varied from the book of The Emperor's New Clothes that he had read. And Charles' recall of detail is pretty good, so he had fairly specific questions, illustrated with quotes from the book. (Until he gets his producing career started, Charles might want to consider being a college professor, as he tends to ask essay questions which require specific examples in reply.) Anyway, one of the things that Young Charles was curious about was why the Emperor wasn't completely naked at the end of the show. In the book, he's naked. (Brett and Cate - what kind of books do buy for this kid???)

Well, I explained, sometimes the book and the play are different, even though they come from the same story.

Yeah, but he wasn't naked. Why? (Or why not. Please answer briefly with specific examples.)

Well, because, Charles, you're eight years old, so you could handle seeing a naked actor, but a lot of the other kids are younger, some of them are only three years old, and it wouldn't be appropriate to have a naked actor in front of three year olds.

This seemed to satisfy him. Producers, after all, know that children's theater needs to be family friendly.

So great. He's better informed and one step closer to being a wealthy and award-winning producer.

And I'm going to spend the rest of my life knowing that I told an eight year old that he's mature enough to see naked actors.

3 comments:

David Gorsline said...

LOL snorting in my morning coffee. Maybe I should bring a third-grader to my show.

Brett said...

Charles regularly reads from Uncle Hugh Hefner's Stories for Kids and is very clued up nekid people thang.

Anonymous said...

Especially funny because I'd think that actually, the younger a kid is, the less of an issue it's likely to be. In fact, I bet most of the kids wouldn't have a problem with it fot the simple reason that they wouldn't know any better. It's the adults who really have the problems with naked people on stage, dontcha think?

-DJ