By Chung Ah-young
“The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Other Eric Carle Favorites,” an English-language puppet show presented by the Mermaid Theater Company from Nova Scotia, will return to the stage in Korea after its first performance in 2008-2009, attended by more than 20,000 theater-goers.
The show portrays eco-friendly and creative stories illustrating the process of becoming a butterfly from a caterpillar, and featuring all kinds of animals in a zoo, to the changing of cloud shapes in the sky through warm-hearted narration and beautiful background music.
The play consists of world-renowned picture book author and illustrator Eric Carle’s three stories ― “The Very Hungry Caterpillar,” “The Mixed-Up Chameleon” and “Little Cloud.”
“Little Cloud” slips away from the rest and transforms itself into various shapes of things it sees ― a sheep, an airplane, a shark and more.
In “The Mixed-Up Chameleon,” a little chameleon is bored with its life ― sitting about predictably changing color all day. So it decides to embark on an adventurous trip to the zoo. Upon seeing the beautiful animals there, the little chameleon tries changing to look like each one of them.
“The Very Hungry Caterpillar” follows the adventures of a tiny and hungry caterpillar that progresses through an amazing variety of foods towards his eventual metamorphosis into a beautiful butterfly.
Marked with stage effects with black lights that highlight the fluorescent colors of the caterpillar puppets, the show is loyal to Carle’s original illustrations.
Carle has published some 70 children’s books including “Brown Bear, Brown Bear” and “What Do You See?” which have been translated into more than 40 languages around the world with his trademark “collage-style” illustrations and eco-friendly stories with bright and hilarious colorful images.
The original book “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” has sold more than 30 million copies since it was first published in 1969 and has been translated into 47 languages around the world.
The book has been also adopted for school textbooks in the United Kingdom and Germany due to its educational content.
The show will be narrated in English, but slowly and clearly to help children in the audience better understand the content by repeating easy words and using ambient music.
Also, after the performance, there will be a questions and answers session and open backstage to show how the performance was prepared. The organizer said that reading the original books before seeing the performance will be helpful in understanding the show more easily.
The performance will be staged from June 7 to 21 at the Towol Theater of the Seoul Arts Center. Tickets cost from 30,000 to 40,000 won. For more information call (02) 582-4098.