If what you know of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book is limited to Disney’s animated film, then there’s a lot you don’t know. Did you also know there was a second book aptly named The Second Jungle Book? Even if you don’t, the Pasadena Playhouse is bringing in a wildly-imaginative telling of these stories in Jungle Book. The show, which runs a family-friendly 65 minutes, opens on Thursday and runs through July 29th.
The creators of this show are Craig Francis and Rick Miller. Though their highly-acclaimed production of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea didn’t make it here, it announced that there are many ways of telling a story with contemporary technology that are fully in service to the story being told and not just there for embellishment.
Amongst the techniques used for Jungle Book are puppets, digital projections, music and poems to tell the story of an architect, Mowgli, who goes back into the jungle to remember, from his boyhood time spent there, how to be a better architect and more in tune with nature. Don’t worry, the characters you know are all here: Baloo, Kaa, Bagheera and more.
Later this week we will have an interview with Rick Miller about their new way of telling this classic story.