There is nothing more special than when you grow up with a story. As you age, you start to understand and relate to parts of the story you never could before. This happened to me recently. I was rereading Anne of the Island by L.M. Montgomery and found that I had a new appreciation for the story than I did when I read it in middle school. It is the third book in the Anne Series, and is the one where the title character, Anne Shirley, goes to university. While the book takes place over a century ago, I found myself relating to the story in many unexpected ways.

In middle school, I had no idea what university life would be like, and I thought the book was quite boring. Now, I see myself in Anne. Her fears when she first got to university, and feeling like she didn’t belong. That’s something a lot of modern college students can relate to. The book also details the making of new friends, growing apart from hometown friends, and feeling like a stranger in your hometown. These aspects of the novel transcend time and remain relatable in modern times. There was even a section of the book where Anne and her friends take in a stray cat, and it reminded me of two particular orange cats that roamed campus in the fall.

I felt so connected to the story, that I acted upon an idea some friends and I had before I left for college- adapting some of the later Anne Series books into a stage adaptation. I had never forgotten the idea we had, but it was when I reread the book I got inspired and felt that I needed to share the story, as I was living parts of it. I started writing the script, not thinking that anything would come of it.  Anne of Avonlea and Anne of the Island are in the public domain, so I used them as inspiration for my script. I have helped to adapt a script before for Little Women, but I joined in late and did not have to make any of the early decisions of how to structure the show. When adapting, choosing what moments to keep in and what to leave out is a very hard process.

I ultimately decided to focus more on elements from Anne of the Island and pull a few dialogue moments from Anne of Avonlea. This narrowed down what I needed to cut out. The next factor in deciding what I would keep in the script was whether or not it was plausible to stage the scene. I knew that if I were to stage the show, I would stage it in my hometown theater. The stage is very small, so I needed to keep the number of different settings to a minimum. This helped me make my final decisions, and then the rest of the cuts happened in the editing process.

I was offered a read-through over winter break with my hometown theatre company. I needed to cut the script to be around eighty pages before the read-through as per the director of the theatre company’s wish. This is where I cut out things that didn’t contribute to the plot or character growth. I also went through and reworded dialogue to show more of the characters’ personalities. Some of my university friends and I even read through the script before winter break, so I had an idea of what I needed to fix. The writing process took several months, but it felt so worth it when I walked into the read-through room.

The read-through went amazingly! The theatre company has picked up the show, and we will be performing it in the summer. I still have some more tweaks to make to the script, but pre-production has already begun. I hope that the story I tell in the script feels as relatable as it did when I read the book. I tried to keep the relatable experiences while still keeping the period alive. I cannot wait to share more about the process of creating a theatre production and maybe inspire someone else to do the same, or to pursue something they’ve been wanting to do. If you’re interested in following the progression of the play, you can follow the theatre company @passion4actingtheatrecompany on Instagram!