“Charlotte’s Web” continues through March 10 at the Alliance Theatre.
By the time Charlotte’s Web began rehearsals, actor Danielle Deadwyler (Charlotte) had already put in more than 50 hours of practice by herself.
“I felt like I was a football player at a combine,” she says.
Is it really all that difficult to play a spider?
It is if you’re incorporating aerial and acrobatic moves like director Rosemary Newcott is. In this Alliance Theatre staging, Charlotte the spider will move through the air, and around the barn and the ground, with the help of silk fabric. And she won’t be alone in making some slippery moves.
“All of the animals in our production have circus skills of one sort or another,” Newcott says. “The idea was born out of the fact that the young protagonist, Fern, is the one who converses with the animals — no one else. The audience shares in this magic.
“If we believe they can talk, why might they not also have other sensational gifts?” Newcott asks. “The County Fair is (and was) a much-anticipated spark of excitement in a rural lifestyle — especially the colorful midway. I simply expanded the ‘fantastic’ element of the fair into the barnyard life.”
So don’t be surprised if you see Wilbur the pig, Templeton the rat or any of the other animal or human characters juggling, unicycle riding, tumbling or clowning — and who knows what else.
Adding these elements just proves the universality and flexibility of E.B. White’s slim but mighty 1952 story. Still, it’s a good thing Deadwyler has been dancing — ballet, hip-hop, African and jazz — since age 5, because those skills are coming in handy.
“Mostly it’s a whole bunch of no fear and hard work and ‘Oh, I can do that,’ ” Deadwyler says of the aerial stuff. “You literally use your hands and feet to climb in a certain way.”
Her days have been filled with stretching, flexibility and core-strengthening exercises as well as weekly sessions and a four-day “boot camp” of sorts with Atlanta-based aerialist and acrobat Liana Repass, creative director of Infinity Circus Productions.
“You need to get to a place with your endurance and strength so that it doesn’t look as hard as it is,” says Repass. After that, the emotions of a character can be layered in.”
Deadwyler does have a very brief — emphasis on brief — background in aerial work. She did a bit at the very end of Shakin’ the Mess Outta Misery at Horizon Theatre in 2010. She’s also got a connection to Charlotte’s Web that goes back to childhood.
“It’s about friendship and compassion for others,” she says of the story. “That’s kind of carried itself throughout my life whether I knew it came from Charlotte or not.”
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Kathy Janich, Encore Atlanta’s managing editor, has been seeing, covering or working in the performing arts for most of her life. Please email: [email protected].
