“Alice’s adventures in Wonderland” was written in the middle of the nineteenth century, and reflects the culture and society that was present in that time, for instance the “mad hatter” was mad because of the solution that was on his top hat, this problem, the problem of going mad because of the solvent used on top hats, was only their in the nineteenth century. Our devised drama, however, is set in the future but also deals with problems in the present day, such as drug abuse and corrupt families. These problems will probably still be around when this drama comes to its set date.
One main theme in “Alice’s adventures in wonderland” is games and learning the rules. All the time that Alice goes to another part of her wonderland, there is a new set of rules that she has to learn quickly. This is seen very clearly in the croquet match with the Queen of Hearts. If she did not learn these new rules, then she would have had to face very harsh consequences. These basics of learning the rules and having consequences in them are very much a part of today’s life.
A main theme in our devised drama is what happens once rules are broken. The girl, Sarah, got frozen because she took class A drugs. This could possibly link onto “Alice’s adventures in wonderland” as in that novel Alice has to learn how to keep to the rules, and in our devised drama, it shows what happens if you do not keep to the rules.
“Alice’s adventures in wonderland” was primary written as a novel and then adapted for the theatre and films. Whereas our devised drama was always meant to be a play and was not written out as a novel. The advantages of writing a novel rather that a play means that there are much fewer restraints. As you can write everything that you can think of, as you can have endless costume and set changes whereas in a play you have to have fewer set and costume changes. For example, in “Alice’s adventures in wonderland” there is a scene with the Cheshire cat, where he disappears and then reappears in a different place. This could not happen if it was set as a play, as you cannot have disappearing things on a play set. In our devised drama, we were very restricted as to when we did the flashbacks as that meant that we had to do a lot of costume and set changes.
In conclusion, these two dramas are extremely similar, as they have similar themes and both would get very restricted if they where put on as a play.
