A puppet show, titled ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ will be staged in Persian and English at the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (IIDCYA) mid-May.
Organized by the Theater Office at IIDCYA, show director Alireza Dehqani said the project is a part of the institute’s ‘Book, Theater, School’ scheme, which covers producing and performing over 15 shows based on the English stories in books taught at the institute, Mehr News Agency reported.
The play is taken from the well-known English fairy tale of the same title. Jack is a young boy living with his widowed mother and a dairy cow as their only source of income. When the cow stops giving milk, Jack’s mother tells him to take it to the market to be sold.
On the way, Jack meets an old man who offers ‘magic beans’ in exchange for the cow, and Jack makes the trade. When he arrives home without any money, his mother becomes furious, throws the beans on the ground. During the night, the magic beans cause a gigantic beanstalk to grow, which Jack climbs to a land high in the sky.
The play will be staged at elementary English language level, said Dehqani. “With the support of IIDCYA, the group will also have a public show later.”
Voice artists Mandana Abqari, Hamidreza Hosseinali, Nasrin Nakisa will accompany Dehqani in the puppet show.
Jack and the Beanstalk first appeared as ‘The Story of Jack Spriggins and the Enchanted Bean’ in 1734 and as ‘The History of Jack and the Bean-Stalk’ in 1807. English author Sir Henry Cole (pseudonym Felix Summerly) popularized the tale in ‘The Home Treasury’ (1842), and Australian folklorist Joseph Jacobs rewrote it in ‘English Fairy Tales’ (1890).
