Northwestern College to present "The Little Prince" on stage

Northwestern College’s theatre department will present “The Little Prince” Feb. 21, 22, 26 and 27 in the DeWitt Theatre Arts Center’s England Proscenium Theatre. The show will begin at 7:30 each of those evenings; there will also be a 2 p.m. matinee on Saturday, Feb. 22.

Based on the book by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, “The Little Prince” is a play for all ages. Children will enjoy the fable-like tale of a lonely, stranded aviator who meets a young traveler, while adults will resonate with its deeper meaning.

The action begins when the story’s narrator crash-lands in the Sahara desert. As he struggles to survive in the face of harsh conditions and to fix his plane, he hears about the adventures of the young prince, who has been visiting different planets to learn about life and love. Together, they discover beauty hidden in secret places and realize that “what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

Ethan Koerner, the play’s director and an instructor in theatre at Northwestern, plans to use projection with a simple set, which will enable him to echo an illustrative, picture-book style for the production. The characters in the story will be played by a mixture of actors and puppets—sometimes with both a person and a puppet portraying the same character at different points in the script.

Starring in the show are Northwestern students Dana Sorenson as the Aviator, Marissa Leraas as the Little Prince, and Lilia Twaddle as the Rose. Other cast members include Rose Hoogers as the King, Logan Thooft as the Conceited Man, Reece Tyrrell as the Businessman, Ella Tweedy as the Lamplighter, Micah De Young as the Geographer, Tabitha Thatcher as the Snake, and Emily Espinoza as the Fox.

Tickets for “The Little Prince” are $10 for adults and $5 for students and go on sale Feb. 7. They can be reserved at nwciowa.edu/tickets, by calling the box office at 712-707-7098, or by emailing boxoffice@nwciowa.edu.

Regarded as one of the best Christian college theatre programs in the country, Northwestern’s theatre department features a collaborative, excellence-oriented environment committed to helping students develop their creative gifts for service in God’s kingdom. Study with Northwestern’s award-winning faculty in the outstanding facilities of DeWitt Theatre Arts Center.