Rather than look at another play or text, I have decided to stay with my chosen Grimm's fairytale; 'Rumpelstiltskin'.
The story tells of a miller, who, in order to make him appear more important, lies to the king that his daughter can spin straw into gold.
The king calls for the girl and demands that she spins a room full of straw into gold by the next morning or be executed.
A strange little man appears in her room offering to spin the straw into gold in exchange for her necklace, and the following night for her ring. On the third night she has nothing left to give, so she promises her first born child to him, not knowing what the future held for her and in hope that it would prevent her from being executed.
The girl ends up marrying the king and has a baby. The strange little man returns asking for what she promised him. The girl (now queen) offers him wealth and riches instead of her baby. The man refuses, but finally agrees to give up his claim to the child if she can guess his name in three days. At first she fails, but on the second night a messenger overhears the man dancing around a fire and calling out his name in the woods “Rumpelstiltskin”. On the third day she repeats his name. Rumpelstiltskin is so angry at this that he tears himself in two.
Other versions of the story have him ‘running away and never returning’; whilst others have him ‘driving his foot so far into the ground that he creates a chasm and falls into it, never to return’.
My initial ideas were to completely modernise the storyline, by setting it in the present day. For example, the scene in which she stays up all night thinking of all the different names would show her searching the internet on a laptop. I’m not yet sure whether I would modernise all elements or whether I would change only a few which could then contrast against the interior of a castle set in the 1800s.
Perhaps this could lead to a sci-fi genre?
Another idea was to have post-it-notes covering the room; a modern element that would convey the idea that the task of guessing someone’s name is quite impossible, especially if it is a strange, unknown name such as ‘Rumpelstiltskin’. On each post-it-note would be a different name.
The post-it-note idea came from the film ‘Bruce Almighty’ (2003), in which Bruce makes all prayers materialise in the form of post-it-notes, which cover every inch of the room he is in and everything in it.
Bruce Almighty (2003) Film Still, post-it-notes
http://www.setbuild.ucreative.ac.uk/09/wordpress/2009/03/
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