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| Stacey Lane |
The story of Camelot and the Knights of the Round Table is a beloved fairytale full of magic and adventure. But how come all the Knights are men? Stacey Lane pondered this thought as she began changing that concept.
“I have always loved in Camelot the wizards and dragons and how it's a magical place where anything can happen, but what I haven’t liked about the story is that it has so few girls. That was my idea on how to start this, how can I approach Camelot and make a female lead? And so I came up with the idea, well maybe this little girl would also be frustrated on how few girls there are in power in Camelot. And it just took off from there.”
Stacey Lane is the playwright who wrote Camelot and Camelittle which is having its world premiere at the East Valley Children’s Theatre Company in Mesa. It is about a little girl who wants to become a knight of the round table in Camelot. But when she goes to show she is worthy, all of her heroes King Arthur, Queen Guinevere, and Sir Lancelot laugh at her. So she decides to prove them wrong and start her own, as Stacey puts it, “Queendom”.
Camelot and Camelittle won the East Valley Children’s Theatre’s playwrighting contest. Playwrights submit original work plays or musicals that are unpublished and if they win, EVCT will perform it in their upcoming season. It is the debut of the story and a worldwide premiere.
Stacey expressed how it felt when she won. “I was excited and happy,” she said. “They provide the playwright resources to come out and see the play and that way the play can become better. I have a chance to see it multiple times fully in production and can do rewrites before I send it off to my publisher. This process ends up making it a stronger script. It’s very exciting and it is out of my hands now,” she laughed. “I get to sit back and get to watch the hard work that everyone else has done at this point and I will be taking notes and figuring out ways that I can make the script better. My part is finished for now and I get to enjoy what they've worked so hard on.”
Stacey will be in Phoenix for the opening weekend of her show. She has won this award before back in 2015 for another original work called Sixty-Seven Cinderellas.
Stacey started out as an actress in the theatre world when she was 10 years old. But before that, she always knew she wanted to be a children’s writer. When she was introduced to theatre she fell in love and combined all of her passions together.
“I have worked in a lot of different aspects in theatre; director, actor, stage manager, costume designer, backstage. And I found that being a playwright I was able to encompass all of the things that I loved about the theatre. Because when you are creating the world you are kind of imagining what the costumes look like and how it would be acted. You have to have an understanding of all aspects of the theatre. And since I already had a passion for writing, it was sort of the perfect marriage of all the things that I loved.”
Stacey still wanted to write for kids but with a different purpose. She wanted to provide children with experiences like the ones she had growing up that made her find her passion. But also give opportunities in her plays to all children. “I always come back to that place of remembering what made me fall in love with the arts and trying to give that experience to children. I don't like to write a play where a kid has to play 'Tree #3', have no lines, and feel unimportant,” Stacey explained. “So I try to approach all the plays that I write thinking about my experience when I was a child actor and the things that made me excited and things that made me frustrated in theatre. And one of the things that made me frustrated was that there were always so many roles for boys in the plays but then so many girls would audition. So only a few girls would get parts but everybody's brother, cousin and neighbor that was a boy would get cast to fill all the roles. When I started writing theatre for adults and children, I want to have female leads and roles that are gender-neutral so that the best actor can get the role instead of just trying to find a bunch of boys to fill the parts.”
When asked what she hopes audiences will take away after seeing her play, she said, “I hope there will be a lot of laughter. I believe that there is a humorous element to most things in life and that humor has the great power to heal and to educate. What I would really hope is that audiences just get lost in the story, that they are with these characters on their journey believing that that’s the world they are in. And that they are enjoying themselves, that's more important to me than someone necessarily learning a great lesson because I think that happens anyway if you are invested in the world.”
Find out more info on Stacey Lane and her plays at www.staceylaneink.com
CLICK HERE for more information on Camelot and Camelittle at the East Valley Children's Theater Company which runs through February 24th with performances February 14-17 and 21-24 - Thurs - Sat at 7 pm Sat also at 4 pm , Sun at 2 pm at the Mesa Arts Center, 1 East Main Street in downtown Mesa. All ticket $15 - available at the box office at 480-644-6500 or on line at evct.org.
For more information on East Valley Children's Theatre's annual playwrighting contest, which has a submission deadline of March 1st, visit their website at evct.org
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