AP News, November 13th, 2007
The Guthrie theater will stage the world premiere of a new musical, "Little House on the Prairie," based on the books of Laura Ingalls Wilder.
Internationally recognized director Francesca Zambello will direct the production next summer on the McGuire Proscenium Stage, director Joe Dowling said.
"Obviously we're hoping that if it's a success it will have a future life," Dowling said. "We're looking at, in conjunction with our national partners, a national tour."
Zambello called the property to Dowling's attention, saying he thought the musical would be a natural for the Guthrie, given the books are set in the Midwest.
Wilder's "Little House" books present a fictionalized version of her years growing up on the Midwestern frontier in the 1870s and 1880s, when the Ingalls family lived in Wisconsin, Kansas, Minnesota and South Dakota.
"The work of Laura Ingalls Wilder has a deep and powerful connection to the people of the Midwest," Dowling said Monday. "This musical fits perfectly within the Guthrie's goal to develop new work that speaks directly to this community."
Zambello said she wanted to make a musical of the "Little House" stories from the moment she rediscovered the stories as an adult.
"Reading of the exuberance of these characters as they encountered the immense power and force of the Prairie speaks to our history as a country and a people. It did in the 1880s and it does now.
"Our musical focuses on the independent spirit of the teenager, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and her struggles to become an adult; along side the story of the land — as it becomes the American West."
Zambello has directed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Washington Opera, Houston Grand Opera and the Royal Opera in London.
The book for the musical, to have a workshop in February, is being written by Rachel Sheinkin, who in 2005 won the Tony for best book of a musical for Broadway's "25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee." Rachel Portman, an Academy Award winner for her score of "Emma," will compose the music with lyrics by Donna DiNovelli.
