Here is the background information for "The Unlikely Duckling." There is a wonderful singles camp that I attend nearly every summer. Each camp has a theme, which changes with each year. For June 2003, the theme was Fractured Fairytales. This is taken from the Rocky & Bullwinkle Show, where Bullwinkle would quote fairytales, but screw up the plot of the story during the telling of it, hence 'fracturing' it. After contemplating which fairy tale I would "butcher", I decided upon The Ugly Duckling, by Hans Christian Anderson. Then, my next task was "how will I change it so that it is funny and at the same time still remains faithful to the original tale?" So, off I went to the library, whereupon I found several translations (also called "interpretations") of this tale. As I read through the first 3 books, all of them illustrated children's books, each was slightly different in the story they told. In one book, a certain passage would appear, in another book the same passage would be absent. It occurred to me that in order to get an accurate picture of what Mr. Anderson wrote and what he wanted to convey, I would need to find a translation of this fairytale and not an interpretation where the author leaves out certain aspects of the story in favor of embellishing other aspects. I did find such a translation in a book that is a collection of all his fairytales. From this version I learned that most of the interpretations I read and the animated movies made of this tale have been "Americanized." By this term, I mean to say that the story has been massaged in order to fit an American culture and it has been "sanitized," so that the more "gruesome" or "gory" details have been left out. For instance, in the beginning of the story, the ugly duckling is hen-pecked by many of the barnyard animals, including his own siblings. Even his own mother comes to shun him. When he runs away, one of the first "befrienders" he comes upon are two game ducks who are on their way to "meet some foxy ducks" (my interpretation). But before they all can take to the sky, BANG * BANG! Both of the game ducks get shot DEAD! It is hunting season, as we soon find out. AND, "the water turns red with their blood." (paraphrased by me) Yes, THIS is his fairy tale that he wrote in his own language. It's not likely that you are familiar with this version, unless you've also gone to the trouble of finding a direct translation of his works. So, now that I had the original version to work from, I began to tinker with just what the story would be about and how it would unfold. I knew that I would need to have a bird that the reader could sympathize with, one which was very out-of-place and yet would be able to triumph in the end by merely being what it was, instead of changing itself to fit someone else's expectations of what it 'should' be. The humorous situations would come to me in a flash of brilliance (if I seem less than modest, so be it) and the challenging situations became apparent with not too much effort. Since this was for a camp show, I wanted to keep the story short enough so as to avoid losing the audience and yet long enough to give justice to Hans Christian Anderson's story. By the time I had settled on this fairytale to do a re-write on, I had 3 days before I left for camp. I had the story half-finished when I arrived in camp. What with settling in, greeting friends from previous camps, and with having fun at this camp, it took me 3 more days to finish it. Fortunately I found 12 others who were willing to join me in the cast. So, with lucky number of 13 in the show, we rehearsed it and had lots of laughs performing it. Enjoy! BACK ON TO THE STORY |