The Quiltmaker’s Gift

This original adaptation of The Quiltmaker’s Gift embraces the playful fairy-tale quality of the two books in magical movement and storytelling shared by the multi-faceted ensemble. Adapted through Moving Dock’s actor-centered ensemble approach, co-director Arnold focused the movement-based imagination work not only around the images from the text, but the illustrations as well. The actors “lifted” their characters and the many atmospheres from De Marcken’s delightful pictures. The ensemble plays a variety of roles to tell the tale of the King and the Quiltmaker. Fusing the two stories together, two actresses play the younger and older Quiltmaker in flashbacks that reveal how the Quiltmaker came to her philosophy of generosity. The theme of stitching together all the squares of the story brings the metaphor of the quilts to life. Access for deaf and hard of hearing viewers is incorporated into the production as actress Shannon Moutinho shadow-interprets the story along the way, adding a second expressive language – a poetic American Sign Language – to the movement mix.