Found in Translation by / Guest Author

Adapting for the stage can be tricky. Josh Costello, who founded Impact Theatre, discovered this as he attempted to adapt Cory Doctorow's best-selling sci-fi thriller, Little Brother, for a world premiere production at Custom Made Theatre Company. He also directed this production, which tells the story of a San Francisco turned into a police state after a terrorist attack on the Bay Bridge and BART.

He kept a blog along the way, chronicling the project and how it changed as he worked on it, before, during and after rehearsals. His blog post "Changes" provides some insight into the hurdles he faced and how he overcame them.

Changes
(Taken from littlebrotherlive.wordpress.com.)

Here are some of the major changes I made in adapting the story for the stage. Fans of the book, please know that I didn't make these changes because I think I know better than Cory Doctorow. I love the book at least as much as you do. But a play and a novel are different beasts, and I ended up making some pretty big changes to make it all work as a play.

For my money, plays are all about the connection between the people on stage — the relationships between the characters, and how they change over time. My favorite plays are the ones that put the focus on what's happening between the actors — as opposed to plays that put more emphasis on spectacular design, for example. One danger with putting a story like Little Brother on stage is that the play can get so caught up in all the different locations and all the different characters that the audience never has a chance to get caught up in that visceral push-and-pull between the actors.

By structuring the whole play around the idea of using just three actors, I've tried to have my cake and eat it too. The three actors are always playing Marcus, Darryl, and Ange — the prologue and epilogue take place in the storefront on Valencia Street after the events of the story. The three of them are telling the story to the audience, with Marcus playing himself, and Ange and Darryl playing everyone else (including themselves). This means that the audience can really invest in the relationships between those three characters — even in the scenes where they're playing other people, the three of them are always there underneath. It also means that we can go from location to location instantly without bringing on big set pieces, and it means all three of them can narrate to the audience, forming a connection that way as well.

Spoilers ahead.

Aside from the three-actor structure, the biggest actual change to the plot is that Van is not in the play, and Ange shows up much earlier in the story. The reason for this is simple: I needed to get the relationship between Marcus and Ange on the table as early as possible, so that the audience could invest in them throughout the evening. Introducing a major character halfway through works better in a book than it does in a play. I also needed to find massive cuts to keep the play at a manageable length, so this change serves more than one very important purpose.

Jolu is still in the play, but he doesn't appear until the keysigning party at Sutro Baths. This means it's just Marcus and Darryl playing Harajuku Fun Madness at the beginning — which allows the play to put more focus on Darryl (and on the friendship between Marcus and Darryl) right away, frontloading that relationship because it provides motivation for Marcus throughout the story and the audience needs to care about Darryl as much as possible. That's another advantage to having Darryl playing all the other characters — even when Darryl has disappeared, the audience is always reminded of him and I can put him in focus whenever it's needed.

Masha is also cut (though there is mention of an anonymous Xnetter on the inside). In the play, it's Ange who bumps into Marcus in the Tenderloin and snaps the photo of him. Then she ends up being arrested along with Marcus and Darryl. There's a new scene — one of the very few sections of the play that came more from me than from the book — with Marcus and Ange in the back of the semi after having been swept up by the DHS. The scene in the prison yard is with Ange instead of Van, and Marcus and Ange are released together and have the conversation about whether they're going to tell their parents. I've moved the burrito scene much earlier, combining it with the conversation about starting the web of trust (which is now between Marcus and Ange). The web of trust and the Paranoid Xbox conversations are conflated; they hand out Paranoid Xbox disks at the keysigning party.

So before things start to get romantic between Marcus and Ange, there are a few scenes of them starting out as rivals if not enemies, then going through the intense experience of being detained together. It gives that relationship a longer arc, and gets Ange into the story almost right from the beginning. It's pretty different from the book, but it's working really well as a play.

Another change is that Zeb is gone, and the letter that finally exposes the DHS and the secret prison is from Darryl. This idea came only in the last draft before rehearsals began, and I think it's hugely important. It's a big reminder of what's at stake for Marcus emotionally; the audience needs something like this late in the play to stay invested in Darryl and that part of the story.

Many minor characters and plot points have been cut or reduced; Ms Galvez and Charles are still in, but just barely. The new teacher is out. Marcus doesn't get suspended; he doesn't read On The Road. Booger and Zit are in. The Don't Trust party in Dolores Park is still in, giving us the ending of Act One — with Darryl in drag playing Trudy Doo.

The ending works differently. Barbara is gone, and the in-game press conference takes her place (much later than it happens in the novel). Instead of Marcus telling his story to a reporter who then writes a news story about it, he tells his story directly to everyone during the in-game press conference. This is a more condensed and more theatrical way to tell that part of the story — the actors appear in clockwork pirate costumes, so we can watch Marcus actively revealing the truth himself, instead of through an intermediary.

The VampMob is gone. Instead, Marcus and Ange are on their way to try to disappear underground the morning after the press conference when they get swept up in a massive spontaneous protest at Civic Center — thousands of people (not just kids — Ms Galvez, Trudy Doo, and Mom and Dad are all there) react to Marcus's revelation of Gitmo-by-the-Bay by taking to the streets. There are two big reasons for this change. First, it provides a little callback to some of the adult characters that we met earlier in the play, providing a sense of completion. Second, I feel like the Occupy movement (not to mention the Arab Spring) has changed the conversation since the book came out, and anything short of a massive cross-generational protest feels a little anticlimactic today.

Marcus is arrested again at the protest, and brought back to Treasure Island — getting us back on track with the book. We end with Darryl, Ange, and Marcus finishing shooting a video in the storefront on Valencia Street. This is a happier ending for Darryl than the book gives us, but I think it's the right choice for this three-actor structure and it's a change worth making.

That's how I feel about all the changes. Whenever possible, we're sticking to the story in the book. All the changes are there to make the story work better on stage. I'm terrified that fans of the book will crucify me for all of this, but I will say this in my defense: it's not like the book itself is changing. The book will always be what it is. There's another stage adaptation for a much larger cast that I'm pretty sure is much more true to the book. There might be a movie one day. This is just one take on the story, one version, and I feel incredibly fortunate that Cory has given it the go-ahead. Cory clearly believes in remixing and retelling, and that's exactly what this is.

I think it works. I think you'll like it. We're less than two weeks from the first preview.

The views represented in this Chatterbox Art & Opinion post are those of the individual author, and do not necessarily represent the views of Theatre Bay Area or its staff.