More Creative Adventures

Madge Montgomery and Evan Bracy in *What Would Abe Do?*

*The Adventures of Mr. Toad* – Scenes from TOAD OF TOAD HALL

Life as we knew it was gone…

And with theaters closed and Covid locking us away, we were all looking for ways to keep ourselves sane and busy. Madge Montgomery, Artistic Director of Theater Company of Lafayette suggested I return to an old play I had written and adapt it for Zoom. What had been a ten minute monologue about Abraham Lincoln and the trials of middle-school teaching became a two hander about teaching online in the face of Covid and Black Lives Matter.

What Would Abe Do? was followed by a Zoom production of Treasure Island, also proposed by Artistic Director Montgomery. I played Long John Silver’s parrot, Capt’n Flint and “another sailor,” but my real contributions were the photo illustrations I got to create for the three episodes. Since we were stuck in our houses, it seemed appropriate to use found objects to create the scenes.

My third adventure was to adapt scenes from A.A. Milne’s classic play, TOAD OF TOAD HALL for Zoom, and then to create several little iPhone movies to serve as scene transitions. My sister, who is a genius with small things and had contributed pirates for Zoom Treasure Island, created the whimsical Wind in the Willow action figures.

My lovely young assistant for Treasure Island was my cat Ollie, and I got to play with my sister throughout the filming of Mr. Toad’s adventures. Lizzie pulled the strings attached to the cars and I lay in the dirt trying to get the shots.

It was truly the best of times. Creating scenes with my little sister took me back to when we were seven and eight building elaborate cardboard box mansions for our Kleenex ghosts – Total Bliss

…I do wonder if any of these projects would have happened without the pandemic.