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Today, another conversation with Lisa Mantchev, author of The Théâtre Illuminata series, the first two books of which are currently available in stores everywhere. You can read my reviews of Eyes Like Stars and Perchance to Dream, and/or my interview with Lisa for the Summer Blog Blast Tour in the linked-up earlier entries, if'n you want, as well as our conversation about Ophelia, which I posted last week. Lisa is a bit of an expert on these plays herself, due to her theatre training, and because Ophelia (from Hamlet) and Ariel (from The Tempest) are both important characters in the Théâtre Illuminata books. See the cover from Perchance to Dream there on the right? That white-haired boy is Ariel. Ooh! And before I move on, I simply must pimp the book trailer for PTD, which is quite possibly the most gorgeous book trailer I've ever seen – it involves a custom-made pop-up book, and it is STUNNING:





Kelly: Prospero: Hero or villain? I'd love to know your thoughts on this, since I see him as a complete mish-mash of a character. On the one hand, he behaved improperly (when he was still the Duke) by ceding his authority to his brother in order to study magic, and by causing the shipwreck. On the other hand, he doesn't allow anyone to be killed, even the true malefactors who sought his own death and/or seek the death of others during the course of the play.

Lisa: My take on Prospero isn't very flattering . . . I always pictured him as a blowhard nincompoop (something entirely due to one of Noel Streatfield's books, Theater Shoes, in which Sorrel's pompous uncle plays him onstage) and it's an image that's stuck with me over the years. Certain incarnations of the character are certainly more likable--it's easy to picture him as a Shakespearean version of Dumbledore, really!—but at the end of the day, he's a bit of a tyrant and a slave owner.

Kelly: Dumbledore? Really? Because Dumbledore seems so much more complex and competent to me than Prospero.

*ponders this further and seeks appropriate HP analogy*

For blowhard nincompoop, I suppose there's always Gilderoy Lockhart. What say you to that?

Lisa: You're right. It's only in his own head that Prospero is like Dumbledore . . . wise and magnanimous. But really, he's much more Gilderoy, who thinks he is doing mankind this huge favor just by showing up. There's potential for sympathy in this character, depending upon direction and casting, and I'm SLOBBERING to see Helen Mirren portray the feminine version, Prospera, but hold out no hope that movie will be relea

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Today, I'm lucky to be chatting with Lisa Mantchev, the author of Eyes Like Stars and the forthcoming novel, Perchance to Dream, both set in the world of the Théâtre Illuminata, a magical theatre inside which dwell all the characters of all the plays ever written. I am madly in love with the characters in these novels, as you can tell from last year's review of Eyes Like Stars and my recent review of Perchance to Dream, on which I jumped the gun a wee bit, since the actual release date of Perchance to Dream is Tuesday, May 25th. Those of you who like contests or cupcakes (or contests involving cupcakes - and you know who you are!) will want to head over to Lisa's blog, where she is running "The Great Cupcakeathon", a fun contest involving fabulous prizes to celebrate the upcoming release of Perchance to Dream.

1. Which came first, the Théâtre Illuminata or Beatrice Shakespeare Smith?

Bertie traipsed in first... it all started with her full name, and the line about the fairies flying around her on wires. I think I was somewhere in the vicinity of my dining room table at the time, working on a (different) short story project.

2. Your first novel, Eyes Like Stars, is one of those that seems a bit difficult to assign to a particular box. Do you consider it fantasy? steampunk? a mystery? adventure? romance? Does it matter that it can't be easily labeled? Was your mixture of all those things and more (including theatre references in general and Shakespeare in particular) a goal when you started, or something that evolved as you went along?

Looking back at my short fiction, I think ELS continues with my signature mixture of fantasy, magic realism, whimsy and--always--elaborate costuming. Certainly there are elements of a mystery (the identity of Bertie's mother) and romance (the love triangle between Bertie and the boys) but I never set out to make conscious decisions about such things. Maybe I should... it might save me some rewriting later on.

As for the theater and Shakespeare angle, I think when I sat down to write My First Novel, I knew in the back of my mind that the adage about writing what you know would hold particularly true when jumping from short to long fiction. An incredible amount of research goes into any novel... the more I knew without resorting to Google on that first book, the better!

3. So, as a follow-up to that answer, tell me a bit about your own theatre background.

I started doing community theater when I was seven... we got a call from one of the other parents at my school, who directed the local musicals, asking my mom if she'd bring me down to the theater to audition for South Pacific. She left a half-crimped pie crust on the kitchen counter to take me (hence the acknowledgment in ELS!)

After that, I did shows like Peter Pan and Beauty & The Beast, performed in The Nutcracker with my ballet class, and started auditioning for non-musicals with the local playhouse. I started writing scripts for school plays in the fourth grade, directed and produced one of my full-length scripts when I was sixteen, then got a scholarship to study Drama at the University of CA, Irvine.

During college, I spent a lot of time focused on the technical aspects of the productions (which is what happens when nerves get the best of you and you don't get cast in shows!) and my senior year I started writing plays again. I did one more community theater production after we moved to Wash

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I know, I know. It's National Poetry Month, you say. Why are you blogging about a prose novel? The answer is that I just can't help myself. And! Many of the characters in Perchance to Dream are based on (or pulled out of) Shakespeare's plays (and I did just post Shakespeare's Sonnet 55 yesterday). Also! There is a bit of poetry within the book. Specifically, on page two of the book, Peaseblossom (yes, one of the fairies from A Midsummer Night's Dream) creates her own prologue, which begins as follows*:

PEASEBLOSSOM
A gloaming peace this evening with it brings
In the countryside where we lay our scene
Toad-ballad accompan'd, crickets sing,
and cupcake crumbs make fairy hands unclean.

(Bonus points to those of you who recognize Peaseblossom's prologue as a parody of the opening of Romeo and Juliet:

Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.

But I digress, as this is not a post about poetry, but is instead a post about Perchance to Dream, which draws its title from yet another Shakespeare play, Hamlet - and specifically from the monologue beginning "To be or not to be, that is the question."

Many of you may recall that one of my favorite YA novels published last year was Eyes Like Stars by Lisa Mantchev. In it, readers were introduced to Bertie (Beatrice Shakespeare Smith), a young girl raised by committee within the confines of the Théâtre Illuminata. Bertie's constant companions are Moth, Cottonseed, Mustard and Peaseblossom, four of the fairies from A Midsummer Night's Dream. In Eyes Like Stars, Mantchev's first book, we learn that Bertie has quite a crush on Nate, a pirate from The Little Mermaid, and is entangled – emotionally and otherwise – with Ariel, the air spirit from The Tempest. Through a fantastic series of events (and I mean that in both senses of the word and in the best possible way), we learn the identity of Bertie's mother and that Bertie has quite a magical way with words. The book ends with Bertie, the four fairies and Ariel setting off into the wide world outside the Théâtre to rescue Nate, who has been taken by Sedna, the sea goddess. If you've not read the first book yet, then I assure you that you are in for a treat – and that I haven't managed to completely spoil it for you. There are so many reasons to read (or re-read) the book: Shakespeare! tango! mystery! adventure! (What I've mentioned here is the sketchiest of outlines.) But again, this review is supposed to be about Perchance to Dream. I am as distractable as a fairy in a dessert car, am I not?

In Perchance to Dream, we follow Bertie's adventure in the wide world alongside the dreamy Ariel, off in a caravan pulled by clockwork horses (so cool!), accompanied by the small (but huge-of-heart) fairies as company. Early in their travels they encounter Waschbär, a sneak-thief who keeps company with a pair of ferrets named Pip Pip and Cheerio, and the Scrimshander, an interesting sort of being whom I won't attempt to describe just now. Both of the new men turn out to have far more important roles than one might initially expect, but in the interest of not spoiling the novel, that's all I'll say about that. There is a wedding feast, a circus train, a magical marketplace, a cliff, an undersea kingdom and more. There are two leading men, one extremely determine

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