Amy Lu's View

Once upon a time, there was a middle-aged amatuer actress who got to be in a local community theater production that was a comedic mash-up of Grimm Brothers’ fairy tales. 

Our show (“The Brothers Grimm Spectaculathon” presented by Applause Community Theatre) incorporated many fairy tales, famous and obscure, but not my favorite fairy tale…because I don’t have a favorite fairy tale. 

This isn’t because I don’t like fairy tales. On the contrary, when I think of fairy tales, I get a warm fuzzy glow. But I think of fairy tales as a collective, without a particular one standing out. 

I remember my mom reading and telling fairy tales to me when I was rather little (seven?) and these were not the Disney versions–these were more traditional tales that were violent and scary and somewhat disturbing, but I loved them because they were weird and uncanny (and hearing them involved spending time with my mother). I can only recall flashes from these stories–there was one that involved a severed head coming down the chimney which was super creepy, and I felt bad for the wolf when he got stones sewed up in his stomach, and I thought “Rose Red” was a really cool name. 

And I don’t mean to needlessly malign Disney (as my character did in our play)–while I’m certainly not a huge Disney fan, I did love Disney’s version of “Snow White” as a kid and was thoroughly frightened by the witch. 

I will also add what I find most disturbing about original or classic fairy tales is not that they’re violent per se, but that they’re often vindictive with a definite “eye for an eye” sensibility. I mean yeah, Cinderella’s stepsisters were bitches, but having their eyes poked out does seem a little harsh. 

I don’t have a favorite fairy tale because they are a stew of images and memories that I’ve loved in different ways throughout my life–part of the canvas of life in different way.

I’m trying to be poetic–but that’s just because I’m lazy and want to do a content dump of my random thoughts and memories about fairy tales in the form of a list:

• When I was a kid I adored pseudo 3-D books that were illustrated by photographs of weird puppets–apparently the genius behind these was Tadasu Izawa Shigemi Hijikata. (Please see images above…I could spend all night looking at images like these. I can’t believe how evocative they are and how many I remember and how they immediately transport me to my childhood. I’m sitting in our living room in our little house on the tundra looking at these right now).
• I also loved the “Fractured Fairy Tales” that were part of “Rocky and Bullwinkle.” I thought they were so clever and that I was so clever for liking them. (I just watched Rapunzel and it held up well, I’ll need to watch more). 
• As a young teen (fourteen) the movie “The Company of Wolves” blew my mind: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087075/. (There was also an angsty and thrilling personal teen drama backdrop to watching this movie that involved seeing it IN MADISON–the big city–that gives this movie mythic “The Life of Amy” proportions). 
• Fairy tales have played a big role in my theater life, especially as a youth and teen. My drama career peaked early when I got to play “Snow White” in a hippie-version when I was in eighth grade (although as I think about it, I realize I had a lot of stage time but not a lot of lines). I had a blast playing “grandma” in a version of “The Red Shoes,” and adored getting to co-rewrite an adaptation of “The Pied Piper” (yes, I thought I was demonstrating how talented and witty I was). I thought the TV show “Grimm” was great fun (even though we never finished watching it). 
• “Into the Woods” is AMAZING and BRILLIANT. “No One is Alone” and the dead mother theme will never NOT make me cry. And “Moments in the Woods”–worthy of its own philosophical treatsie. 
• I’ve had a long-standing, if shallow, interest in cultural, social, sexual, feminist, etc. interpretations of fairy tales.  

I have loved, and continue to love (or at least have passing interest in) retellings of fairy tales–even bad and dumb ones. I love reworkings of myths and legends and fairy tales because I always find the combination of “Hey, I know what this is AND this is new (or off and wrong and weird)” to be thrilling. 

I think the common association of “fairy tales” is with romance (for better or worse) but that’s not why I gravitate towards them. Who cares about the Prince? I like their drama and despair and weirdness. Fairy tales are the gateway (or at least were for me) to being a sci-fi geek. 

And so the middle-aged lady and her theatre friends worked their asses off and successfully staged a show based on fairy tales to the amusement and delight of their audiences (small but much-appreciated as they were). 

And the middle-aged lady lived Happily Ever After…until she started worrying about what role she might possibly be able to wrangle next. Perhaps she can make a deal with a supernatural being or two to procure a role (but damn, she’s way to old to offer a baby…).