Artist Statement

Reimagining Treasure Island: What I Changed and Why

When I began conceiving Treasure Island Reimagined I had a simple goal in mind: taking a classic story and making it relevant to a contemporary audience without losing the core elements that made the story classic in the first place. To my mind, what makes the Stevenson novel a classic is its rollicking story-line and the fact that everything we think of when we think of pirates today originated in this novel:

The one-legged pirate
The talking parrot
The treasure map with an X on it
“Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum…”
“Shiver my timbers!”
Long John Silver

The list goes on and on. I wasn’t going to change any of that.

But I’m the father of two active and imaginative daughters and one thing I’ve noticed is that there just aren’t many classic adventure stories with girls as protagonists. So I wondered what might happen if I made the protagonist here a girl. The more I dove into the book and researched the time period of the story, the more excited I got.

For starters, a girl who dreamed of adventure in mid-Eighteenth Century England didn’t have many options. Once a girl married, she and all her possessions became the property of her husband and she had few legal rights herself. One alternative in real life was to, yes, become a pirate. In fact, some of the most infamous pirate captains were women — most notoriously Mary Read and Anne Bonny.

So, unlike with a “Jim,” where seeking adventure would be seen as normal, with a “Jane,” things would get more complex. For starters, she would need to disguise her very identity to get on board the ship at all. Later in the story, when one of the pirates tantalizes her with the offer of joining his crew and one day maybe becoming a captain herself, the offer would take on another layer of meaning. After all, in polite society there was no such thing as a female captain of any ship. And she has to fight that much harder to get the respect she deserves. Even some of her allies underestimate her — simply because she’s a girl.

This adaptation is dedicated to my daughters. In fact, the character of Jane is very much modeled on my younger daughter. Scarlett’s curiosity, humor, and logic are in the very DNA of the Jane Hawkins you’ll see on the stage and screen tonight. When Jane asks a question by saying, “Question,” that’s Scarlett.

I made a few other changes, too. I urge you to read the original novel. I had a lot of fun updating it and you might find it fun to see what I did and did not change. Most importantly, I did my very best to excise the boring parts. Please let me know if I failed in that regard.

See you at the show!

Jason Neulander
Writer, Director, Producer