Going By the Book: An Excerpt from "The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane"

Nicholas Mongiardo-Cooper and Ann Noble in The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane.

The book cover.

Author Kate DiCamillo says a very elegant rabbit doll she received as a gift inspired her writing of the wondrous tale, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane.

“Not long after receiving the rabbit, I had this very clear image of him underwater, on the bottom of the sea, minus all of his finery, lost and alone,” DiCamillo relates.

“I wasn’t thinking particularly of other books when I was writing Edward, but looking back, I can see that I was influenced by some pretty powerful stories: The Mouse and His Child, Pinocchio, Winnie-the-Pooh, Alice in Wonderland. I can see the influence of all of those masterpieces in my small story,” she says. 

Below is an excerpt from chapters eight and nine from DiCamillo’s book. We join the story just after the fisherman, Lawrence, rescues Edward from the sea.

On land, the old fisherman stopped to light a pipe, and then, with the pipe clenched between his teeth, he walked home, carrying Edward atop his left shoulder as if he were a conquering hero. The fisherman balanced him there, placing a callused hand at Edward’s back. He talked to him in a soft, low voice as they walked.

“You’ll like Nellie, you will,” said the old man. “She’s had her sadness, but she’s an all-right girl.”
Edward looked at the small town blanketed in dusk: a jumble of buildings huddled together, the ocean stretching out in front of it all; and he thought that he would like anything and anybody that was not at the bottom of the sea.

“Hello, Lawrence,” called a woman from the front of a shop. “What have you got?”

“Fresh catch,” said the fisherman, “fresh rabbit from the sea.” He lifted his cap to the lady and kept walking.

“There you are, now,” said the fisherman. He took the pipe out of his mouth and pointed with the stem of it at a star in the purpling sky. “There’s your North Star right there. Don’t never have to be lost when you know where that fellow is.”

Edward considered the brightness of the small star.

Do they all have names? he wondered.

“Listen at me,” said the fisherman, “talking to a toy. Oh, well. Here we are, then.” And with Edward still on his shoulder, the fisherman walked up a stone-lined path and into a little green house.

“Look here, Nellie,” he said. “I’ve brought you something from the sea.”

“I don’t want nothing from the sea,” came a voice.

“Aw, now, don’t be like that, Nell. Come and see, then.”

An old woman stepped out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on an apron. When she saw Edward, she dropped the apron and clapped her hands together and said, “Oh, Lawrence, you brung me a rabbit.”

“Direct from the sea,” said Lawrence. He took Edward off his shoulder and stood him up on the floor and held on to his hands and made him take a deep bow in the direction of Nellie.

“Oh,” said Nellie, “here.” She clapped her hands together again and Lawrence passed Edward to her.

Nellie held the rabbit out in front of her and looked him over from tip to toe. She smiled. “Have you ever in your life seen anything so fine?” she said.

Edward felt immediately that Nellie was a very discerning woman.

“She’s beautiful,” breathed Nellie.

For a moment, Edward was confused. Was there some other object of beauty in the room?

“What will I call her?”

“Susanna?” said Lawrence.

“Just right,” said Nellie. “Susanna.” She looked deep into Edward’s eyes. “First off, Susanna will need some clothes, won’t she?”

And so Edward Tulane became Susanna.

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"The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane": Designing and Dressing Edward

Brad Culver and Edward.

Scenic designer Ann Sheffield and costume designer Kathryn Poppen had a common starting point in their work for The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane: neither had done rabbit designs. But Sheffield took on the challenge to create the sculpted doll and Poppen designed the doll’s clothing.

“These clothes were quite a different scale and I haven’t done much menswear tailoring,” Poppen laughs.

The story of Edward Tulane, the dapper china rabbit whose journey takes him from self-centered to the ability to love, was adapted for the stage by Dwayne Hartford and based on Kate DiCamillo’s popular book.

“When I was first asked to create the rabbit doll, I was thrilled, but I didn’t know the story,” Sheffield recalls. “I called my nine-year-old niece and asked her if she knew the story. She screamed with excitement and said, “‘You have to, Auntie! You can’t say no!’”

Sheffield started her design work for Edward by looking at the illustrations in DiCamillo’s book. While she had done a lot of painting and other work, including set models, she hadn’t done much figurative work—“or in this case, rabbit work.”

She started with a Styrofoam sphere and light-weight modeling clay, but puzzled over how to make the rigid head remain connected to a softer body design. She borrowed an old, small china-head doll from an earlier SCR production and saw how the single head-and-shoulder unit connected to the body and settled on that for her solution.

But back to Edward’s face. Sheffield whittled down the Styrofoam and added the clay. But, while she was proud of it, she noted it looked “a bit clunky.”

A 3-D printed version of Edward.

“Edward is more elegant and has a narrower face,” Sheffield says.  “My first design looked less like the illustrations from the book and more like the Easter bunny. So I started looking at jackrabbits.”

Jackrabbits are longer and leaner and worked better as a model. Sheffield “sliced through the clay cheeks, like cutting through an avocado, and then everything really started coming together after that.”

SCR suggested a high-tech solution to produce the seven dolls needed for the show: 3-D printing.

The process used to create Edward is called stereolithography.  It’s a 3-D printing process—done one layer at a time—that uses a liquid resin cured by an ultraviolet laser. The company that did the 3-D work printed four sets of rabbit parts at a time over two-and-a-half days.

“I thought that was marvelous!” Sheffield says.

Edward’s painted face is expressive—“I am happy to see that Edward does have that snooty look for quite some time, but by the end, he is smiling”—and the eye sockets hold marbles “to catch the light a little bit.”

Next, the challenge of his very dapper wardrobe. That’s where costume designer Poppen comes in.

Edward’s dapperness comes in contrast to the adult actors, who wear what Poppen designed as something that “felt lived-in, like clothing, not like costumes.” 

The story is told over a couple of decades—from the 1920s through the 1940s. She says the characters all live their lives vicariously through Edward, and his journey is one of hope: for them and for him.

Poppen gave Edward a “color story” as part of his journey.

Edward, Nicholas Mongiardo-Cooper and Brad Culver.

“We keep him in cold and austere colors at the beginning,” she says, like blues and white that contrast with the warmer tones of the adult characters’ costumes.

“The whole point is that Edward’s very vain, not loving, and he has a distance. But, as he goes through his journey, his colors get a little warmer, becoming more broken down and more accessible.”

Poppen starts and ends the play with Edward in three-piece suits: he starts out in a dark three-piece suit at the beginning and he is in a warm earth-tone suit at the end. “My hope is that he’s more approachable by the end of the story,” she says.

Poppen designed suits, a dress, a hobo outfit and more for the Edward dolls.

“This story made me think about when I donate something: how much more its life can be furthered, but also how what I donate could influence someone else’s life,” she says. “That’s also what I may do when I design costumes—those could be used again for other characters through the years. Just think about how many other people will be influenced by them.”

The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane is getting rave reviews from audiences—and oohs and ahhhs for the creative teamwork of Sheffield and Poppen on the china rabbit doll.

“I also love the way that Edward is spoken by actor Brad Culver and how the music and storytelling are seamlessly integrated,” Sheffield says. “I hope that audiences will go with us this journey and find it transformative.”

More About the Designers

ABOUT ANN SHEFFIELD
Sheffield grew up in London, where she always was involved in the arts—music and painting. In addition, drama was part of the curriculum. But, she never dreamed that there’d be a role for her in the theatre as an artist.

She attended Occidental College in Los Angeles and, while singing in the choir, she met people who were involved in the theatre; they asked her to make some posters and then asked her to design a set.

“I didn’t even know what that was!” she laughs.”My college mentor said “Of course you can do that!”

She went on to earn top honors for set design during her senior year at the nation’s most prestigious theatre competition, the American College Theatre Festival. There she met the man who became her mentor in graduate school at Yale University, Ming Cho Li.

“I always like being a student of something and the process of finding out about and discovering things,” she says. “Designing Edward Tulane was another opportunity to do that and challenge myself.”

Read more about Sheffield in the program.

ABOUT KATHRYN POPPEN
Poppen credits her grandmother as the first sewing inspiration and mentor she had. “She’s the reason that I got into the ‘construction’ side of sewing and from there, it organically developed into an interest in the theatre.”

Poppen took sewing classes and her first project was a little sewing bag. From there, she started doing more projects.

Her next mentor was close to home as well—neighbor and fashion designer Elizabeth Galindo, whointroduced Poppen to design in her fashion studio. Galindo also does costume design, in film, television and theatre.

“In theatre, we are creating characters and developing a whole world,” Poppen says. “So as a costume designer, I have to represent the world and answer so many questions through what the character is wearing.”

Poppen says that until the age of 12, she wanted to be a surgeon. But she loved so many things—history, art, English and sewing. While she now does a different kind of stitching than a surgeon, she is still able to do sewing and combine all of her other loves through costume design.

Read more about Poppen in the program.

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The Timeless Charm of "Edward Tulane"

by Andy Knight

Kate DiCamillo, author of The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane

Kate DiCamillo

Author Kate DiCamillo was born in Philadelphia, Penn., and grew up in Florida. After moving to Minnesota in her 20s, her homesickness and the bitter winter helped inspire her first novel for young readers, Because of Winn-Dixie, published by Candlewick Press in 2000. The novel quickly became a bestseller and received a Newbery Honor.

DiCamillo’s next novel, The Tiger Rising, was published in 2001 and selected as a National Book Award finalist. Since then, DiCamillo has written picture books, early chapter books and novels—all of which have been praised by young readers, parents and critics. Two of her novels, The Tale of Despereaux and Flora & Ulysses, won the Newbery Medal (2004 and 2014, respectively); her early chapter-book. Bink and Gollie won the 2011 Theodor Seuss Geisel Award; and many of her books have been New York Times Best Sellers.

The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane was first published in 2006. In an interview with the book’s publisher, Candlewick Press, DiCamillo discussed the inspiration behind the story: “A friend gave me a very elegant rabbit ‘doll’ (sorry, Edward) for Christmas a couple of years ago. Not long after receiving the rabbit, I had this very clear image of him underwater, on the bottom of the sea, minus all of his finery, lost and alone.”

The novel’s popularity earned it a spot on the New York Times Best Seller list, and the newspaper named it one of the Notable Children’s Books of 2006. Edward Tulane also won The Boston Globe’s Horn Book Award and Publishers Weekly named it the Best Book of the Year in children’s fiction (2006).

DiCamillo still lives in Minneapolis, where she faithfully writes two pages a day, five days a week. In addition to writing, the author is the 2014-15 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature.

The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane begins in a house on Egypt Street in the mid-1920s. There, a young girl named Abilene Tulane receives a large china rabbit from her grandmother, Pellegrina, on her birthday. The rabbit is exceptionally well made and handsome, with ears and a tail made of real fur and an entire wardrobe of dapper outfits. Abilene loves the rabbit very much and names him Edward.

Edward, however, cares for no one but himself and doesn’t respond to Abilene’s declarations of love. Not that he could, anyhow, with his painted-on mouth. He passes the days thinking about his magnificent appearance and little else. Years go by, and Edward’s life of comfort stays the same.

Kate Poppen’s costume design for Edward (as Malone).

One day, Abilene, Edward and the Tulane family embark on a trip to England aboard a ship. Many of the passengers admire Edward, but when two young boys spot the china rabbit, they snatch him away and throw him around—actions that eventually send Edward overboard. He sinks to the bottom of the ocean, where he stays—alone with his thoughts—for quite some time.

A great storm brings Edward back to the surface and he is caught in a fisherman’s net. The fisherman, Lawrence, decides to bring Edward back to shore as a gift for his wife, Nellie.

Ann Sheffield’s set design for the Tulanes’ house on Egypt Street.

Nellie repairs Edward and names him Susanna—a terrible indignity in Edward’s mind, to be mistaken for a girl! Just as Edward settles in to his new life, however, Lawrence and Nellie’s arrogant daughter steals him, takes him to the town dump and throws him on the trash heap. Edward is, once again, left alone.

But Edward’s journey is far from over—for each time he’s lost, he’s also found. Years go by as the china rabbit travels across the American countryside, and along the way Edward meets a variety of characters, assumes a number of different identities and experiences both joy and heartbreak. As he’s whisked from adventure to adventure, Edward undergoes a great change: he learns how to love—perhaps the most miraculous thing of all.

Kate Poppen’s costume design for The Traveler.

In playwright Dwayne Hartford’s adaptation of Kate DiCamillo’s popular children’s novel, the china rabbit’s journey across 1930s America comes to life using imaginative storytelling and an ensemble of four actors who play a variety of characters. Director Casey Stangl—whom SCR audiences know from past Theatre for Young Audiences productions, most recently James and the Giant Peach and Anastasia Krupnik, as well as from SCR’s season productions (Venus in Fur)—was charmed by Hartford’s play after reading it.

“I love this adaptation,” says Stangl. “It’s very theatrical and transformative, with an actor voicing the thoughts of Edward and all the actors playing musical instruments.”

Although it’s not a musical, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane does use folk music throughout, performed live by the actors, as another way to tell the play’s story. The themes of love, loss and hope in the songs complement Edward’s tale, and the musical style evokes early 20th-century America. Yet, for many of the production’s younger audiences, these songs might be entirely new.

“I’m particularly looking forward to introducing these iconic American tunes to a new generation,” says Stangl.

Despite its historical setting, Edward Tulane’s story is a timeless one.

“We all project ourselves onto other people, and the play presents that in a clever and dynamic way that’s both fun and moving,” Stangl points out. Each character that Edward meets on his journey needs him for a different reason and each one helps the china rabbit comes to terms with the responsibility of love. At its heart, Edward Tulane is about learning to both love and be loved—a lesson that’s not only timeless, but also one for all ages.

To bring the production to life, Stangl assembled an imaginative creative team that includes Deborah Wicks La Puma (musical director), Ann Sheffield (scenic designer), Kate Poppen (costume designer), Karyn Lawrence (lighting designer) and Corinne Carillo (sound designer).

Edward Tulane’s talented cast includes Sylvie Mae Baldwin, Brad Culver, Nicholas Mongiardo-Cooper and Ann Noble. Read more about the cast here.

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Hopping Onto a Stage Near You—Actors and Musicians for "Edward Tulane"

THE CAST: Brad Culver, Ann Noble, Nicholas Mongiardo-Copper and Sylvie Mae Baldwin.

The four actors in The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane harmonize quite well—in addition to their acting talents, they all bring musical skills to this tale of the little china rabbit (Julianne Argyros Stage, Feb. 6-22). One newcomer and three South Coast Repertory veterans come together for this Theatre for Young Audiences production. Sylvie Mae Baldwin (The Traveler) plays viola and makes her debut at SCR. She’s had a lifelong love for acting, dance and music and has portrayed everything from an eyeball to a Shakespearean character. Brad Culver (The Musician) was in last season’s production of James and the Giant Peach. He plays bass. Nicholas Mongiardo-Cooper (The Man) is a TYA veteran, with a half-dozen productions at SCR under his belt. He plays guitar and other instruments. Ann Noble (The Woman) most recently was in SCR’s TYA production of Anastasia Krupnik. She plays ukulele!

Find out more about these artists and buy tickets.