When the Department of Theatre and Dance presents “Alicia’s Lens” this March, audiences will experience a production devised by the Fredonia Young Company.
“Alicia’s Lens” follows a young photograph on a journey through an underground world inspired by Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” Through her camera lens, she documents a mesmerizing journey of self-discovery and imagination.
The production runs from March 6 to 9 in the Alice E. Bartlett Theatre of Rockefeller Arts Center on the Fredonia campus. Performance times are 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 6; Friday, March 7 and Saturday, March 8 with 2 p.m. matinees on Saturday, March 8 and Sunday, March 9.
Tickets are available online 24/7. They may also be purchased on Monday, Wednesday or Friday by phone at (716) 673-3501 or in person at the Fredonia Ticket Office in the Williams Center from 9 a.m. until 3 p.m.
At the center of the production, according to director Nestor Bravo Goldsmith, associate professor of Theatre Arts, is a “dedicated team of student playwrights lead by Fletcher Dickmann who have worked collaboratively to create a compelling, layered narrative.”
“The script seamlessly weaves humor and drama, blending contemporary dialogue with Wonderland’s surreal logic,” Goldsmith said, “Through rich character development and sharp storytelling, it offers both emotional depth and moments of playfulness, making Alicia’s journey engaging and thought-provoking.”
Dickmann, a junior B.A. Theatre Arts major with a Creative Writing minor, worked closely with fellow students Karma Guida and Byron Alexander to create the script. He answered the following series of questions designed to offer insight into the story of “Alicia’s Lens.”
Q: What inspired this play?
Answer: “Alicia’s Lens” is an absolute melting pot of inspirations. At its heart though, it is a tribute to and reinterpretation of Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” The original novel remains beloved to this day due to Carroll’s incredible use of language through repetition, allegory, parody, and more. “Alicia’s Lens” aims to marry that same rich, playful use of text with more serious themes and the modern struggles affecting young artists. Structurally, “Alicia’s Lens” takes a lot of inspiration from the monomyth structure as well as classical allegories and fables, especially Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s “The Little Prince.” We wear a lot of our inspirations on our sleeve in this script, and many quotations and allusions within the text should prove familiar to audiences.
Q: Can you describe your writing process?
A: “Alicia’s Lens” came together through a long period of time and a spirit of collaboration. Nestor provided the writing team with a general outline in early May 2024, but gave us a lot of freedom to fill in the gaps as we saw fit. Karma Guida and Byron Alexander were my assistant playwrights and were vital to bounce ideas off of and to help push our way through the trickier scenes. During the fall semester, the three of us would meet at least twice a week to work on the scenes and have them ready to present to the actors every Friday morning. Then, we’d take the feedback from them and what we’d seen in rehearsal to take the script back and rework until we were satisfied.
Q: How did you develop the characters?
A: The characters of “Alicia’s Lens” were all developed through the lens of this being a sort of fable, with each character teaching Alicia something, whether they be an oppositional or supportive force. The story as a whole is very much about grief, with each character giving Alicia some sort of idea on how to process the death of her father. Meanwhile, each character’s individual traits come from a mix of our analysis of the novel, as well as subjects that interested me and the team. The Tweedle Twins are very heavily inspired by aspects of physical theatre, Humpty Dumpty utilizes a lot of the writings of Chilean philosopher Jorge Millas, the Mad Hatter and March Hare are both very referential and attuned to pop culture, and so on. We sought to create a balance between the recognizable, iconic traits that make them so beloved and our own original ideas and interpretations. We didn’t want to write a direct adaptation.
Q: What were the biggest challenges in writing this play?
A: “Alicia’s Lens” is the first full-length play I’ve ever written and features a cast of 11 playing eighteen separate roles, which is a lot of moving parts to keep track of. Additionally, this is the first of my writings to ever be staged for an audience, which adds an entirely new level of things to bear in mind. Having a team to collaborate with made so much of this process easier. Additionally, making the scenes in the “real world” as compelling as the fantastical Wonderland sequences proved challenging. The pre-Wonderland section of the play went through several major rewrites until we were finally able to land on something we were happy with. Additionally, chess is a central metaphor of the piece, which required a lot of research and reworking to ensure the “choreography” we wrote for the chess games was both realistic and thematically significant.
Q: What are the central themes and messages of your play?
A: “Alicia’s Lens “is a story about the importance of family, of art, and of personal growth. Our message is one of overcoming grief not by forgetting, but by remembering, and of the symbolic and literal power of art to influence our lives.
Q: What do you hope audiences will take away from the performance?
A: I hope audiences will take away a sense of joy from the performance. For all the somberness and introspection in the play, there are just as many moments of comedy and beauty and light, which I believe is incredibly important in a world that seems ever-increasingly lacking in hope. The story of Wonderland has inspired countless artists since its original publication 160 years ago, and I hope the audiences that come to see this show leave it feeling as inspired by it as I have felt for the past 10 months.
