Bridge to Terabithia
A Play with Music. First presented at Louisville, Kentucky’s Stage One in 1990, this adaptation of the Newbery-winning novel by Katherine Paterson and Stephanie Tolan has been presented by countless professional and amateur troupes in this country and abroad. Steve Liebman provided the music which is melodic and easy to sing. (Samuel French, Inc.)
The Tale of the Mandarin Ducks
A Play With Music. The team of Katherine Paterson, Stephanie Tolan and Steve Liebman based this play on Paterson’s retelling of a Japanese folk tale. It contains two stories: that of a pair of Mandarin ducks and the samurai and kitchen maid who save their lives. The play draws on conventions of Japanese theater, using puppets, masks, and visible prop men. (Samuel French, Inc.)
The Great Gilly Hopkins
This musical by the team of David Paterson and Steve Liebman is based on the novel by David’s mother. The play premiered at Stage One, Louisville, Kentucky in 1996 and went on to the New Victory Theater in April of 1998, receiving rave reviews in The New York Times and The New York Post. (Samuel French, Inc.)
The Tale of Jemina Puddle-Duck
A Musical Play. Book and Lyrics by Katherine Paterson and Stephanie Tolan with Music and Lyrics by Steve Lieman. This play for young audiences is a light-hearted take of Beatrice Potter’s classic story of the duck determined to hatch her own eggs. Her encounter with the smooth-talking bushy-tailed gentleman nearly brings her happy dreams to a tragic end. (Dramatists Play Service, Inc.)
Unpublished Plays
(Contact playwrights for information)
Surviving the Applewhites
By Stephane Tolan and Katherine Paterson. Based on Stephanie Tolan’s award-winning novel, this is the story of a teenage misfit who finds himself placed with a large family of theatrical eccentrics where only one person seems to be “normal.” Tolan who married a theater director in 1964 refuses to say how much of her own life is reflected in this story.
Good King Wenceslas
Katherine Paterson and Stephanie Tolan have written a comic/miracle play about a struggling family theater that finds that their one money-making play of the year, Dickens’ Christmas Carol is being produced by the rival theater across town which has not only pre-empted their opening but stolen most of their cast and backstage staff. The long-lost older brother of the director returns after 37 years bearing a gift, but not the one the family needed or wished for. In this play within the play, brotherly jealousy, family conflict, romance, and a genuine Christmas miracle all somehow come together before the final curtain.
