02.Oct.2009 Beyond: Notes from the Director of THE GIVER

by Richard J Roberts, Director of The Giver

“I thought there was only us. I thought there was only now.”

Over the past few months, I have mentioned to various people, young and not so young, that I am directing The Giver. And every time the reaction has been the same. First: “Oh, I love that book!” And next: “How are you going to do that on stage?”

The Giver is a magical book, filled with astonishing flights of vivid imagination. The world Lois Lowry creates is very different from ours, but she doesn’t explain it to us. Rather, she tells us what happens in the community, and lets us fill in the blanks for ourselves. Because we must work to figure things out as we read, the world we create in our minds is infinitely richer than anything that could be put on paper. Perhaps it is this act of co-creation with the author that makes reading the book such a fulfilling experience.

A movie version of The Giver has been in development for years. When and if it is finally produced, it is sure to have a multi-million-dollar budget and loads of special effects. It may turn out to be a wonderful movie, but like all movies, it will not leave much to the imagination. This is why I feel the stage is the perfect place for The Giver. Just as Lois Lowry asks her readers, we ask you, our audience, to use your imagination to help create the wonders that Jonas experiences. Just as the Giver helps Jonas discover there is a world beyond what he knows, so the theatre offers us infinite opportunities to discover stories, lives, worlds beyond our own.

“I thought there was only us. I thought there was only now.”

There’s more. There’s so much more.