Jenifer Toksvig

In 2010, Jenifer will be adapting this brilliant book afresh, in association with YMT:UK, as a dance and choral-focused site-specific work.

During a three week process, this short piece of music theatre was devised in collaboration with a cast of young people, aged between 11 and 19, composer Nick Sutton and librettist Jenifer Toksvig.

To compose leitmotifs for the characters, the cast used innovative composition software developed at MIT that translates images drawn on electronic sketchpads into notated music. This music formed the basis for composer Nick Sutton's electronic underscore, just as devised work on storytelling formed the basis for Jenifer's contemporary verse libretto.

This project was an exciting collaborative experiment that brought together the often opposing worlds of scripted adaptation and devised work, of opera and music theatre, of live and recorded music, of modern music technology and the ancient art of storytelling through song.