Stage Adaptation

[thepurpleknight]

We are a group of college students who greatly admire the work you're doing with Katawa Shoujo, and are interested in developing a stage play adaptation of Act 1 to be performed free of charge through our student-run theatre. The play would utilize audience participation in the form of voting on each choice tree and experiment with giving control of the flow of a story to a larger group. We would be using the characters, dialogue, and the overall scene structure/choice tree, though of course some adaptation to these will be required. Since Katawa is released under a no-derivatives license, we need permission from the creators. The full proposal for the production will not be turned in until April. In addition to your permission, if you guys have script files that we could use, it would be highly preferable to typing it up while playing through it. Thank you for your time!

[Mirage_GSM]

Now there's an idea!
I'm a member of a theatre group as well, and I think it would probably suck for the actress who plays Misha to memorize all the text for the Shanghai scene, only for it not to come up at all. (Shizune's actress wouldn't have that problem obviously)
Then again it would be a great incentive for people to see your play multiple times to see all the endings
If you really do this play and happen to film your performances, I'd like you to send me a copy.

[Silentcook]

...this is definitely new. In any case, before discussion starts, you need to register a forum account.

[Minister of Gloom]

This would be a most incredible thing to see. Any chance of you posting a video of this on this website or another, should this work out?

[Worthington]

Since you're only doing Act 1, wouldn't the play end on a rather unsatisfying note? It may be more practical to just wait until the full game is out and then do an adaptation from there, no?

[Mirage_GSM]

Probably not, for various reasons:
1. The full version would simply be much too long for a stage play.
2. While there has been much overlap between different scenes in Act I, it has been stated that this won't be the case in Acts II-IV. Thus you would basically have to prepare five plays (including sets, extras, etc.) and maybe not even play all of them. That would be very dissatisfying for actors who might not even get to be on stage for all the effort they put into the production.

Besides, Act 1 stands pretty well on its own.

[thepurpleknight]

The full version would definitely be too long to adapt, as this production needs to be relatively short. As for Shizune/Misha, we're hoping to find actresses who know ASL or are willing to learn (I already know a few), and for authenticity's sake they would be memorizing, at least roughly, all of their silent dialogue. There will also most likely be some shortening of the Shizune path, in order to give the play a consistent run time. And if the play is produced, we will definitely be putting a video up somewhere, don't worry!

[Yukimi]

It sound awesome If you put the video up that would be realy great ^__^

[traitor]

now that is one fantastic idea

The only thing that might be a problem is if you have an obviously Caucasian actress wearing a purple wig and calling herself Hanako, then it might give the audience the shakes.

[Mirage_GSM]

Physical resemblance is only of minor importance in a stage play. The simple reason for that is that your normal troupe only has a limited pool of actors.
If we were doing this project in our group, I doubt we would bother with purple, blue or even pink wigs for Hanako, Shizune or Misha respectively. If you've seen the stage adaption of Sailor Moon, you'll know this looks ridiculous and distracts the audience from what's really going on.
The greatest problems will be Emi and Rin. I think it'll be rather hard to portray the leg-blades and while Rin's actress can simply pull her arms beneath her shirt, sh'e have to learn to do a lot of stuff with her feet...

[thepurpleknight]

Rin will be at least manageable, but right now Emi is our biggest hurdle in the show. Obviously having someone with actual prosthetics is impossible - any suggestions on the best way to represent her onstage would be most welcome!

[Xybaro]

Rin will be at least manageable, but right now Emi is our biggest hurdle in the show. Obviously having someone with actual prosthetics is impossible - any suggestions on the best way to represent her onstage would be most welcome!

Emi has a pair of realistic looking prosthetics like in this image

http://shimmie.katawa-shoujo.com/image/2136.jpg

Just get your Emi to wear leggings like these and say they're realistic type prosthetics she has.

I've also forwarded you another relevant image, to your PM inbox.

[Otakumon]

May be a bit over the top, and the added height might be a problem depending on the size of your stage, but maybe you can find a place nearby where you could rent some Skyrunners. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFjQN5vdBJk

[Mirage_GSM]

That way, Hisao could always look up to Emi

[Leotrak]

... I am speechless beyond the ability to think at the awesomeness of this idea O.O