M.F.A. candidate and dramaturg Walker Zupan reflects on the importance of telling stories like James and the Giant Peach, which thoughtfully explore the challenging and beautiful truths of childhood –
Several years ago, while reflecting on his work as a children’s book author, Matt de la Peña asked: “How honest should we be with our readers? Is the job of the writer for the young to tell the truth or preserve innocence?”
As dramaturg for James and the Giant Peach, currently onstage at The University of Texas at Austin’s B. Iden Payne Theatre, I’ve found myself grappling with similar questions. In particular, I’ve wondered: How much should we emphasize some of the darker elements of this classic Roald Dahl story? Does telling the truth and tending to the experience of our young audience members with sensitivity and care exist in contradiction?
As an educator and maker of Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA), I encounter these questions often. Adults, particularly those in leadership or funding roles, express concern about staging stories that might unnecessarily expose young people to challenging or painful realities. They fear upsetting children, corrupting their innocence or opening an unwieldy can of worms by exploring topics such as loss, violence or inequality.
Yet, in refusing to stage TYA that grapples carefully with these themes, I always wonder: Exactly whose innocence is preserved? What systems are sustained by our refusal to look, with sensitivity and candor, at these kinds of challenging, complex stories alongside the young people in our lives? We know, particularly in the wake of the pandemic, that children in Texas, as well as throughout the U.S., are intimately familiar with hardship – often, in deeply unequal ways along lines of race, class and gender identity. Is it supportive of young people to shield them from stories that reflect both the beautiful and wondrous as well as the difficult truths of their realities?
In sitting with these questions as part of my dramaturgy for James and the Giant Peach, I’ve repeatedly returned to the wisdom of children’s book author Kate DiCamillo. In response to her friend and fellow writer Matt de la Peña’s question, mentioned at the start of this article, Kate offered the following: In telling stories for the young, it is our responsibility to “tell the truth and make that truth bearable.”
I see James and the Giant Peach as a piece of TYA aiming to do exactly this. It is also, in my view, why this story, like so many by author Roald Dahl, is still enormously popular among young people throughout the world. The play, like the book on which it’s based, is set in motion by tragedy. Its main character, James, is subject to cruelty from adults and intense bouts of loneliness. Yet ultimately, like all of Dahls’ protagonists, James discovers strength he didn’t know he had. With the support of newfound friends, he escapes his villainous Aunts, ventures across an ocean and makes a wonderful new life for himself in New York City.
In our story, as in each of his books, Dahl refused to shy away from the challenging and painful experiences of being a young person. At its heart, however, James and the Giant Peach is a story and play about young people’s capacity for resourcefulness, connection and wonder in spite of hardship. Dahl’s reverence for children – their imagination, resilience and unapologetic belief in magic – is the thread that weaves the world of our story together.
Kate DiCamillo ultimately observed that the only answer she could come up with for how exactly to both tell the truth and make that truth bearable was love. Reflecting on E.B White’s Charlotte’s Web she writes, “White loved the world. And in loving the world, he told the truth about it — its heartbreak, its devastating beauty. He trusted his readers enough to tell them the truth, and with that truth came a feeling that we’re not alone.”
In James and the Giant Peach, we’re offered a TYA play that tells heartbreaking and beautiful truths about childhood – a story rooted in love for young people and their wonder at the world around them. A play that reminds us, no matter our age, that we’re not alone – that others see and honor the complicated truths of our lives.
I invite you, along with the young people in your life, to come see James and the Giant Peach at the B. Iden Payne Theatre here at UT Austin. I trust that you, too, will see truths of your experience, both challenging and wondrous, made visible in beautiful ways.
James and the Giant Peach
October 31-November 10, 2024
B. Iden Payne Theatre
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Written by Walker Zupan.
