By Lucie Casinghino – Contributor

The Bishop’s University Drama Department staged their production of Le Petit Prince last week from March 13 to the 16 in Centennial Theater. This play was an adaptation of Saint-Exupéry’s children’s book Le Petit Prince which was placed within a larger narrative taken from Saint-Exupéry memoir Terre des Hommes. The work of adapting the books was done by the director of the play and Bishop’s artist-in-residence Manolis Antoniou.

In his memoir Saint-Exupéry recounts the eight days he spent marooned in the desert along with his co-pilot Andre Prevot. That incident provided the central framework for the play, which uses those eight days to introduce moments from the book Le Petit Prince into the world of the play. As Saint-Exupéry and Prevot tried to stay alive, the world of the play felt in flux, teetering on the edge between life and death, reality and illusion, fiction and historical fact. Add David Bowie into the mix, and what came out was a cosmic journey into friendship, love, and death.

The actors in Petit Prince didn’t have set roles. Rachel Matthews, one of the actors, explained that the goal was a collective narration process. As she put it, “We’re carrying the stories.” Frequently during the play one actor would start a monologue, and then another actor would carry on where the other left off. This melding of voices meant that the script’s narrative fluidity was reflected in the on-stage acting.

A key aspect of Petit Prince was the focus on language. The actors spoke in English, French, and Spanish, and two screens above the stage projected the actors’ dialogue, with the text in English on the screen to the right and the text in French on the screen to the left. This production moved beyond language barriers to create a dynamic linguistic experience. The incorporation of different languages and core texts helped Petit Prince to weave together a fantastical exploration of life and its precarity. The actors embodied different characters, different worlds, and different languages in order to capture a sense of wonder and transformative adventure.Bishop’s University Drama Department productions bring people together to support the arts. Through these plays, the Bishop’s community can enjoy the plays and celebrate the hard work that the drama department puts into their productions. At Bishop’s, drama productions audiences get to experience the excitement of live theater, and this was certainly true for this production. With Petit Prince, audiences were treated to a narrative full of cosmic visions, intertextuality, and dance breaks.