Alice on bikes

Wheels of Wonderland is an interactive theatrical spectacle—a production of Alice in Wonderland performed entirely on bicycles—celebrating human-powered magic of all shapes and sizes. Featuring the Austin Bike Zoo, a variety of Austin, Texas-based performers and many creative cycling characters, this free event takes place May 2, 3, 9, and 10 in various Austin parks.

Liddell Jokes

"Lewis Carroll and Alice Play Call Our Bluff" by Alan Lance Andersen and Rebecca Ann Edwards appears in the July issue of Games Magazine, which will be on newsstands around May 15th. This nicely illustrated piece is a feature article/puzzle in which the reader tries to solve the puzzle in the text—to determine which of the many tidbits of Alice history are true and which the authors made up—and these are based on, to quote Mr. Andersen, "quirky trivia" about Lewis Carroll and Alice Liddell. [Though some Carrollians might have one or two quibbles with the information in the article.]

Santa Fe Meeting Update

Note that the agenda for the LCSNA's spring meeting in Santa Fe on Saturday, May 9 has been updated and added to. In addition to Theaterwork's performance of La Guida di Bragia, there will be a musical performance of the chamber piece "The Chess Game" (based on Through the Looking-Glass) - check out the details! I highly recommend attending if you can make it.

Cosmetic bag

Japan always puts a nice twist on Alice... Check out this "goth style" black and white cosmetic bag sold by exporter Jbox.com.

Wonderland Circus

You are cordially invited to Wanderlust Circus's performance of Wonderland Circus: "A tea party and theatrical review in honor of the new queen of wonderland, depicting her legendary adventures with a cast of the finest acrobats, jugglers, dancers, and musicians any world has ever known!" April 24 and 25, and May 1 and 2 at Portland's Bossanova Ballroom.

Alice of the House of Carroll

April 24 through May 30, "Alice of the House of Carroll grabs you by the throat and kicks you down the rabbit hole into a wonderland filled with maniacs and thieves and where love melds with aggression. ...the National Pastime Theater lifts Alice out of her comfortable place in children’s theater and thrusts her onto the city streets of late 19th century Chicago. Like our world today, Chicago at that time was a world that needed to rebuild. Alice, a pleasant little girl, pulses with an instability that is common to everyone and in particular, to a world, like ours, that seems to be disappearing down a rabbit hole. THIS SHOW IS NOT FOR CHILDREN OF ANY AGE."

Wonderland

"Alice’s adventures in Wonderland have never before been told like this…with clowns, acrobats, jugglers, and musicians. When Alice searches for a way back home, she will meet the caterpillar, the white rabbit, and she will have to escape from the dreaded Queen of Hearts. You may think you know this classic story, but hold on to your hats, because this world premiere created by master clown Jeff Raz of Cirque Du Soleil for the Advanced Training Program of the Clown Conservatory and produced by Active Arts will be the wildest, craziest trip to Wonderland you’ve ever taken!" The show is performed from April 18 to May 3 at the Julia Morgan Center in Berkeley, California, and from May 9 to May 17 at the Front Row Theater in San Ramon, California.

Alice and Kitty

On June 15, The Oxford Children's Literature and Youth Culture Colloquium will present a talk on Disney's Alice, Hello Kitty's Alice, and Carroll's Alice: An Aspect of Children's Cultures in the US, UK, and Japan by Yasuko Natsume of Tsuda College, Tokyo.
This talk examines American and Japanese animated film adaptations of Lewis Carroll’s Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as a means of accessing children's cultures in the U.S., U.K., and Japan. Natsume's paper focuses on Disney’s self-supporting, independent Alice (who stands in contrast to the majority of early Disney princesses) and Sanrio’s 1993 Hello Kitty™ version, in which Kitty, a Japanese symbol of cuteness, plays the part of Alice.

At a theater near you...

On March 31, NCM Fathom and MarQe Entertainment Inc. announced a series of New York Theatre Ballet performances to be shown exclusively in select movie theaters nationwide beginning this August. Six performances of dynamic chamber ballet classics will be presented including The Alice in Wonderland Follies. Tickets will be available beginning Friday, July 10, at www.FathomEvents.com.

Bloomsbury Auction

Bloomsbury Auctions' Literature, Manuscripts and Modern First Editions sale on April 23 has quite a few Carrollian items: Lots 333, 772, 856, 1097, 1099, 1104, 1162, 1227, 1301, 1408, and 1409 include modern limited editions signed by illustrators such as John Vernon Lord and presentation copies of Euclid and His Modern Rivals and The Game of Logic.

But not the very best butter knife

"The Texas Radio Theatre Company performed this audio adaptation in November 2008 at the Dallas Public Library. On stage at the time, from left to right: Shannon Atkinson as Alice, David Grant as the DoorMouse [sic], Clark Hackney [who seems to be channeling Ed Wynn] as the Hatter and Reg Platt as the March Hare. Rich Frohlich is adding prerecorded sounds and Ken Raney is performing the live sounds, with the exception of David's noise maker and Reg's horn (or tea cup) ."

If you look carefully at Joshua Kemble's very clever "Attack of Literacy" t-shirt, you can see Lewis Carroll (right behind Shakespeare, which seems appropriate).

Call for abstracts

Call for Abstracts: Alice in Wonderland and Philosophy
Edited by Richard Davis for The Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series

Abstracts and subsequent essays should be philosophically substantial but accessible, written to engage the intelligent lay reader. Contributors of accepted essays will receive an honorarium.

Possible themes and topics might include, but are not limited to, the following:
“Down the Rabbit Hole”: Perception and Reality in AiW; “A Place Where Everyone Knows Your Name – or Not!”: Alice, Names and Naming; Word Games and Long Tails: The Ambiguities of Language and Life in AiW; Cheshire Grins and Other Decaying Objects: The Status of Non-Being in AiW; “Growing Up – and Down”: Alice and the Phenomenology of Body; The Meaning of Meaning: Derrida and Rorty in Wonderland; “Who in the World Am I?”: Self-Knowledge and Mistaken Identity in AiW; A World of Animals: Alice, Talking Beasts, and Animal Rights; “I Was a Different Person Then”: Memory, Change, and Personal Identity in AiW; Sense and Nonsense: Wittgenstein, Language Games, and Wonderland; Wishing it Were Some Other Time: The Mad Hatter, Clocks, and Temporal Passage; Caterpillars and Contradictions: How Logic Fares in a World of Lunacy; How Not to Lose Your Head: Politics and Persuasion in the Queen’s Court; “Give Your Evidence”: Alice, Athens, and the Apology of Socrates; Existential Alice: Being and Nothingness in Wonderland; The Zen of Alice; “One Pill Makes You Larger …”: Alice and Drug Culture.

Submission Guidelines:
1. Submission deadline for abstracts (100-500 words) and CV(s): May 18, 2009
2. Submission deadline for accepted papers: July 3, 2009
Kindly submit by e-mail (with or without Word attachment) to
Richard Davis (rdavis@tyndale.ca).

Radio Alice

BBC Radio 7's dramatization of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, performed by Sarah Jane Holm and Roy Hudd, will take place (part 1) Thursday, April 9 at 10 a.m./3.00 p.m./3.00 a.m. (Friday) GMT, and (part 2) Friday, April 10 at 10 a.m./3.00 p.m./3.00 a.m. (Saturday) GMT .