Spring 2025
Performed By: 30 2nd-12th Grade Youths
Directed By: Marc Weinblatt
Director’s Notes
Choosing a play for student actors is always a challenge and calls for many considerations – educational value, age and capacity of the players, enlivening to the greater community, as well as fun for me to direct. I have been dreaming of putting the world of Middle Earth onstage for many years. The choice for this year’s OCEAN play became obvious.
This has been a delight beyond my wildest dreams, in part to deeply engage with the work with J.R.R. Tolkien, one of the greatest storytellers of our time. And what an honor to turn this wonderful young cast onto the poetic genius of Tolkien, not just reading the book or watching the movie but living inside it. As with doing Shakespeare, it is like riding bareback on a magnificent stallion – wild, glorious, and exhilarating. But we, the team of artists bringing the story to life, have to be at our absolute best to hold on and so lift up, and perhaps even enhance its majesty.
“The Hobbit” has become an iconic part of Western culture, most recently due to the smashing success of the Peter Jackson movies, “Lord of the Rings” and then “The Hobbit”. For fans of the movies, the visual imagery and the casting has left an indelible impression, that is hard to compete with. This production is not the movie. It can’t be. There is no Legolas, no Tauriel, no Azog the Defiler. Those characters are not in the book. I continuously went back to Tolkien, cutting and adding sections to keep it as close to the book as I possibly could for 2 hours of live theatre on a shoestring.
Lastly, I cannot say enough about our extraordinary team of professional artists from the OCEAN community and beyond, who have given their absolute best and hours of their time to support and mentor these kids. I have been astounded at how above-and-beyond the adults involved in the production took their efforts. The Elven King is onstage for less than 5 minutes; check out her throne! And that is just one example. We truly love these kids. They are amazing. That’s why we do it. Theatre can be transformational; done right it can even change lives for the better. That is holy theatre. As always, that is my deepest wish for all who are touched by this production – our young actors and crew, the adults who back them up, and now you, the audience. We are now … at your service!
— Marc Weinblatt
