WILLIAM AND THE SEA PEOPLE

• contains references to : Peter Pan, Robinson Crusoe and Treasure Island.

• William doesn’t find the small objects in the game, vital for winning. small things can make between FAILURE AND SUCCESS.

Scene 1: The Beach

William plays a video game : an old game called “William and the Sea People”.He wants to go to the aquarium with his friend Jenny.

William tries to play but

loses and says that it is stupid. The computer talks to him and says that he can stay at the bottom of the sea.

Scene 2: The Bottom of the Sea

William is chained to an anchor. Neptune and Ondine tell William that Jennifer is a prisoner of Captain

Hook . He has to free Jenny if he wants to be freeThe Genie will help him.

Scene 3: The Desert Island

William is free and sees Robinson Crusoe and

Sunday They tell William he can’t stop playing because he must free JennyRobinson gives William a bottle with a parchment :

“In the Coral Reef find a Key.

On the Pirates’ Ship find a Map.

In the Siren’s Cave find a

Compass.”

William puts the parchment on the floor.

He sees the Genie: now he has three wishes.

Scene 4: The Coral Reef Fish of all types swim. William wears a snorkel, mask and flippers. He finds an oyster shell which contains the key!William tells the second wish:Scene 5: The Pirates’

ShipWilliam arrives in the port and watches Captain Hook and Smee. Hook gives Smee the Treasure Map. Smee puts the map under his hat. Hook asks Smee for the key, but Smee can’t find it. William wants the Treasure Map. Smee thinks the key must be in the sea.William takes Smee’s hat,

Smee jumps into the sea, and William takes the map.William calls the Genie for the last wish.

Scene 6: The Siren’s CaveWilliam and the Genie see the Siren.William asks her if she has the compass. She says yes. The Siren says that we must listen and ask for

help.William finishes his wishes.Scene 7: The VoyageWilliam is alone in the Treasure Island. With the map and compass

Scene 8: Treasure Island

William arrives but Jennifer is no there. Hook says that William has something: the key!

William denies so Hook asks the audience and the audience shouts back “NO!”. If he gives him the key he will free Jennifer. So William gives him the key, but Jennifer is with the sharks.William fights Hook. Jennifer arrives and takes Hook’s sword and forces Hook until he falls into the sea. William is the first person

to reach level eight. Using the Treasure Map they find the treasure chest and open it with the key. It is full of jewellery and coins.The voice of the computer announces that William won the game.

Scene 9: The Beach

William is on the beach. His father arrives looking

for the book: “Robinson Crusoe”. Scene 10: The AquariumWilliam is with Jenny at the aquarium. Jennyis happy with the gift. She goes in the next room and sees the sharks. William looks and for a momentthinks he can see Hook’s face among them.

Background notes

The Characters

Several characters are from classic British fiction (Hook, Robinson

Crusoe) or from mythology and fable (Neptune, Ondine, Genie,

Siren).

Captain Hook

Hook is the famous villain from the classic children’s story, Peter

Pan, written by James Barrie (1860-1937). James Barrie, was a

Scottish dramatist and novelist (recently played by Johnny Depp

in the film “Finding Neverland”), whose works, both theatrical and

non-theatrical, stress his personal ironic view of life as a romantic

adventure.

The first performance of Barrie’s now world-famous fairy-tale play,

Peter Pan was in 1904. In this fantasy, Barrie dealt with his two

favourite themes, the retention of childish innocence and what he

conceived to be the feminine instinct for motherhood.

Robinson Crusoe

Daniel Defoe, (1660-1731), was an English novelist and journalist,

whose work reflects his diverse experiences in many countries and

in many walks of life.

Defoe’s first and most famous novel, The Life and Strange Surpriz-

ing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner, appeared in

1719, when he was almost 60 years old. The book is commonly

known as Robinson Crusoe. A fictional tale of a shipwrecked sailor,

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it was based on the adventures of a seaman, Alexander Selkirk, who

had been marooned on one of the Juan Fernández Islands off the

coast of Chile, now called Isla Róbinson Crusoe.

Robinson Crusoe is a story

of adventure and ingenuity, and also a

travel narrative in which the hero journeys to Africa, Brazil, China,

and Siberia, and then is shipwrecked on a deserted island. But to

view the novel as simply a fascinating travelogue is to ignore much

of what makes it valuable and interesting to modern readers.

Throughout the narrative, Defoe details an individual’s struggle to

survive in basically hostile surroundings. As part of his day-to-day

existence, Robinson

Crusoe faces starvation, illness, pain, possible

insanity, even danger from cannibals. Through ingenuity, hard work,

and common sense, he improvises many of the comforts to which he

was accustomed in England. Crusoe never broods about his isola-

tion; rather he occupies his time productively and triumphs over his

unpromising environment, thus becoming an example of the triumph

of the human spirit.

The novel has become one of the classics of children’s literature.

Defoe authored only one novel for young people. He is recognized

today as an important figure in the development of the novel, and as

a master of narrative realism.

Neptune

Neptune, in Roman mythology, is the god of the sea, son of the god

Saturn, and brother of Jupiter, king of the gods. Originally a god of

springs and streams, he became identified with the Greek god of the

sea, Poseidon.

Ondine

Ondine was a water nymph in German mythology. She was very

beautiful and (like all nymphs) immortal. The only threat to a

nymph’s eternal happiness is if she falls in love with a mortal and

bears his child - she will lose her gift of everlasting life.

Genie

In Western fiction, after the Aladdin tale in the Western version of

The Book of One Thousand and One Nights, genies typically come

from small oil lamps and grant three wishes to the person who

rubbed the lamp to release the genie while more mischievous ones

take advantage of poorly worded wishes. Alternately, they may grant

a single wish per day.

The word was first used in English as “geny” to mean a guardian

spirit, with the first recorded use in 1655. The word came from the

French genie, which in turn came from the original Latin word gen-

ius, for a spirit.

Siren

The Siren was a sea nymph in Greek mythology, sometimes de-

scribed as having the body of a bird and the head of a woman or like

mermaids: half woman, half fish. The Sirens are the daughters of a

sea god. The Sirens had such sweet voices that sailors who heard

their songs were lured into grounding their boats on the rocks on

which the nymphs sang. A similarity exists between the stories con-

cerning mermaids and

those told about the Sirens, though mermaids

originate in different legends

Objects and Places

Many tales of the sea, pirates and desert islands have introduced

phrases into the language. The popularity of such

tales, in fact we

are continuing to add to these tales with stories such as Finding

Nemo.

Treasure Island

Robert Louis Stevenson was born in 1850, in Edinburgh, Scotland,

the only child of a prosperous, middle-class family. Stevenson was

forced to ask his parents for money to supplement the meagre in-

come from his writing efforts.

During a cold, wet summer in Scotland in 1881, Stevenson drew a

treasure map for his stepson — thus originating the world of Treas-

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ure Island. Stevenson set to work creating a story to accompany the

map, and published the novel in 1883. Treasure Island is a swiftly

paced story of a search for buried gold and evil pirates.

Stevenson later settled in the British health resort of Bournemouth,

where he wrote Kidnapped and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, both of

which were published in

1886.

Although Stevenson’s reputation has declined since his death, he

is still recognized as a master storyteller, and Treasure Island and

Kidnapped remain among the most popular adventure stories of all

time for young readers.

Pirates

Piracy is the crime of robbery on the high seas committed by the

captain or crew of a ship outside the normal jurisdiction of any na-

tion, and without authority from any government. The

persons who

engage in acts of piracy are called pirates. Pirates are regarded as

common enemies of all people. In that nations have an equal inter-

est in their apprehension and punishment; pirates may be lawfully

captured on the high seas by the armed vessels of any state and

brought within its territorial jurisdiction for trial in its tribunals.

In municipal law, the term piracy has been extended to cover crimes

other than those defined above, such as the illegal

copying of CDs

and DVDs.

Coral Reef

A Coral Reef is a ridge or elevated part of a relatively shallow area of

the seafloor, approaching the sea’s surface. It is formed by a rocklike

accumulation of calcium-containing skeletons of coral animals, red

algae, and molluscs. Built up layer by layer by living corals growing

on top of the skeletons of past generations, coral reefs grow upward

at rates of 1 to 20 cm per year. Coral reefs are

tropical, forming only

where surface waters are never cooler than 20° C.