Secret Garden, The – all for One productions

Some SECRET GARDEN FAQs

Part of our mission at all for One is to educate as well as entertain and inspire. This blog and the dramaturgy in each program are among our efforts to enlighten and educate our audience. We hope to deepen your understanding of the background and implications of the stories we present on stage.

Here are some topics which may raise questions in the minds of our audience: Why India? What is cholera? Why are gardens walled at Misselthwaite? Are English and American robins the same? These are addressed briefly in the program, but we hope you will take the time to “read more about it” on this page, and share what you learn with your children who have enjoyed The Secret Garden.

The Secret Garden and Kid-Lit’s Golden Age

The Golden Age of British children’s literature refers to a remarkable period during which a vast number of western literature’s best-loved books were written. Consider that between 1900 and 1930:

Beatrix Potter wrote and illustrated her many picture books for young children, beginning with The Tale of Peter Rabbit.
A.A. Milne created Winnie the Pooh.
E. Nesbit wrote her wonderful children’s novels, including The Railway Children, Five Children and It, and The Enchanted Castle.
Frances Hodgson Burnett wrote A Little Princess, The Secret Garden and Little Lord Fauntleroy.
J.M. Barrie created Peter Pan.

And this list is not exhaustive at all. There was also an explosion of American children’s literature at around the same time: The Wizard of Oz, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, The Call of the Wild and Pollyanna, to name a few.

The wonderful thing about all these books, to my mind, is that they are not written “down” to children, over-simplified and dripping with moral lessons. Rather, they are strong original stories which are amusing, engaging and often thought-provoking, but which are most appropriate to the genre (fairly new at the time) of children’s literature.

Frances Hodgson Burnett, writer of classics

The first in a series of posts on the background of all for One’s The Secret Garden, which opens April 20, 2018. For tickets, call (260) 422-4226.

Who was the woman who gave the world two of its most beloved children’s classics? She was not perhaps quite what you might have expected.

Her books were all set in the British Isles, but she left England as a teen and did not return for some years. In fact, the last years of her life were spent on Long Island, where she is buried.
She wrote famously of little girls, but she bore only sons.
Her books focus on comfortably wealthy families, but she experienced a “riches to rags” life and only regained financial stability by long years of perseverance as a writer.
Her stories are full of lively and optimistic characters, but she suffered from depression on and off throughout her life.

The cast of The Secret Garden

We are excited to announce the cast for the closing production of our 25th anniversary season, Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden (adapted by Sylvia Ashby): MARY LENNOX--Violet Park* COLIN CRAVEN--Micah Gilliom DICKON SOWERBY--Jack Voirol* MARTHA SOWERBY--Tori Beth Bowman* ARCHIBALD…