This Girl Laughs, This Girl Cries, This Girl Does Nothing

by Finnegan Kruckemeyer
Atlantic Theater for Kids, Linda Gross Theater, February 10 – March 4 2018
Director: Alison Beatty & Tom Costello. Original Hangmen set: Anna Fleischle. Plot: Joshua Carr.
Original music: Nate Weida. Set: Edward T. Morris. Lighting: Elizabeth Mak.
Costumes: Katja Andreiev. Props: Caitlyn Murphy. Photography: Edward T. Morris.

This Girl Laughs, This Girl Cries, This Girl Does Nothing is a charming little fairytale play with some Hansel and Gretel-like beginnings. Three girls are left alone in the woods, forced out by their cruel stepmother and a passive, defeated father. They then spend the next 2 decades growing up all over the world before returning home. One sister learns about creative and destructive leadership, another travels the world to find what she's been looking for, another stays right where she is in order to learn that to take care of others, you must first take care of yourself.

Our show played in the mornings on top of the set of the US premiere of Hangmen, the new Martin McDonagh play. The design team had the challenge of turning a dour Irish pub where hangings take place into a woodland grove filled with string lights and foliage. All the props in the show were made from everyday household items, fueled by pure imagination to create everything from a lighthouse that topples into the ocean to a nosy and opinionated badger puppet. I had the added challenge of using a plot designed for a two-scene straight play to light our mini-musical, creating spaces such as a battlefield and the ocean, and reflecting the passage of time and seasons as the girls grew up.