Magic of The Little Prince returns to Galway venues

Morgan Creative’s adaptation of Antoine de-Saint Exupery’s book The Little Prince, which premiered at this year’s Galway Theatre Festival in May, returns to Galway County and City this month as part of a national tour. It will be in Clifden on August 10, in Oughterard on August 11 and in the City’s Nuns Island Theatre from August 16-19 at 7pm nightly, with an additional 2pm show on August 19.
Antoine de-Saint Exupery’s iconic novella, first published in 1943, is a fantastical adventure that explores growing up and how the imagination we are all born with can save us.
“My dad introduced the story to us as kids and I’ve always loved it,” says its director, Luke Morgan. “It’s about a man coming to terms with imagination and the importance of imagination.”
Children are totally imaginative, but we lose that magic as we get older, he says, quoting Pablo Picasso’s maxim that ‘all children are born artists. The problem is to remain an artist as we grow up’.
Retaining that childlike facility doesn’t seem to have been a problem for Luke and his brother, Jake, of the Morgan Collective, which they set up “to hold on to our imaginations”.
Their first project was the Theatre Room Galway, a monthly showcase of one-act plays written, directed, and performed by local artists, which took place in the living room of Luke’s rented flat.
And Morgan Creative have staged shows for the past three Galway Theatre Festivals – the first, in 2016, was Gondla while last year they produced Crime and Punishment.
“With The Little Prince, we thought we’d test the water in the children’s market,” Luke explains, adding that they also “want to break out from just being Galway-based”. With that in mind, the company have already travelled to the UK with Crime and Punishment and are touring this show nationally.
While Luke directs The Little Prince, his brother Jake, a composer and conductor, who is studying for a Masters degree in Composition for Screen at the University of Edinburgh, provides the score.
Antoine, the narrator of The Little Prince, has been stranded in the desert after his airplane crashed. He has just a few days’ supply of water and must repair his plane before it runs out.
As he works on fixing the engine, Antoine is visited by a boy from another planet. The boy, whom he refers to as The Little Prince, helps the pilot survive the lonely days in the desert by recounting his experiences hopping from one planet to the next.
The Little Prince’s stories contain some startling revelations on adulthood, and what it means to live in this crazy, wonderful world.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and  county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.