The Jungle Book

Dawn McAndrews Director	Katherine Keaton Set Designer	Elizabeth Rocha Costume Designer	Laura Happel Lighting Designer
Rew Tippin Sound Designer	Desery Pacheco Stage Manager

Cast

Michael Dolan Shere Khan/ Vulture	Sarah Goldman Mowgli	Kara Green Mother Wolf/ Kaa	Tessa Martin Bagheera/ Wolf/ Vulture
Caitlin Ort Father Wolf/ Baloo

From the Director

Welcome to the wilds of India and Greg Banks’ joyous adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s beloved children’s classic—The Jungle Book. I’m sure it came as a surprise to our long-time audience members that this year’s family show was written by someone other than the producing artistic director. Quite honestly, it surprised me as well. I had thought that we would continue the tradition of creating our own modern takes on these literary classics but when I read Greg Banks’ play, I knew it was the way to go. And that I wanted to direct it.

Kipling’s 1894 and 1895 original tales were about much more than a young boy being raised by jungle creatures. Based on Kipling’s own feelings of abandonment as a child, the stories endow animals with human emotions and character traits to teach the young man-cub respect for authority, avoiding the irresponsible side of human nature, and the need to find one’s place in the world. The story is certainly familiar to most from Disney’s 1967 animated feature or 2013 live-action film. In Banks’ adaptation it literally takes a small village of adopted animal parents to keep the man-cub, now wolf-cub, safe while teaching him the laws and ways of the jungle.

Along the way Mowgli learns the meaning of family when he meets Baloo the Bear, Kaa the Snake, Bagheera the panther, a whole troop of monkeys, and the dreaded tiger Shere Khan. Playwright Banks says, “Despite all the animals, it’s a tale about human experience. Really it’s just a story about growing up and being alive and making friends and understanding how to survive in the world.”

All the many characters of Kipling’s story are played by just five actors. In addition to swapping some of their gender identities, characters have new personalities, speaking patterns, and performed actions from previous adaptations. So, for those of you expecting the Disney version be warned, this Jungle Book has both returned to its origins and reimagined the journey as one of discovery and ultimately balancing abandon and responsibility as we pass from childhood to adulthood knowing there is a family and a village always waiting to support us.