Award-winning-deaf theatre creator and performer Landon Krentz brings The Little Prince: A Physical Theatre Adaptation to the stage with the ambitious goal of celebrating the beauty of belonging, communication, and the power of visual language–in the process transcending spoken language and inspiring audiences to see the world through new eyes.
From where I sit, Krentz sticks the landing in this world premiere co-production, which is almost entirely text-free. This co-production of Theatre Passe Muraille and Inside Out Theatre delivers a powerfully diverse, inclusive and timely lesson in seeing the essential from the heart – using multiple forms of non-verbal communication, including Visual Vernacular (VV), American Sign Language (ASL), breathtaking vertical dance, and immersive projection design.
The Little Prince of course, is a universal tale by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. In this unique adaptation, the Little Prince (Krentz) leaves his home to escape his painful relationship with the Rose he cares for and to search for meaning, knowledge, and understanding of the world. The boy ventures through eight planets in the cosmos, each with its distinct residents, lessons, and experiences. On Earth, the final planet, he meets and forms a deep friendship with the Aviator (Ralista Rodriguez), who is lost in the desert and in the original book, serves as the story’s narrator. The Little Prince’s experiences and discussions reflect on themes such as love and friendship, loneliness, human nature, and humanity’s encounter with the essential.
To Krentz, it is crucial for the production to bridge cultural and linguistic gaps between deaf and hearing audiences. For this reason, accessibility, inclusion, and diversity are of paramount importance. The play is directed and dramaturged by Suchiththa Wickremesooriya, with deaf Dramaturgy by Joanne Webber. The entire cast is deaf and, outside of Krentz and actor Ali Saeedi, female. Ebony Gooden, Ralista Rodriguez and Hayley Hudson play multiple female roles, which updates and changes the mostly male skew of the original tale.
Adapting for today
The Little Prince is not just an artefact of a past context: whether 1943, when the story was published, or more broadly the period of the author’s life. No, Krentz’s Little Prince is the universal and eternal inner child who lives inside every human being, and is silenced by the adult world – especially today, in our techno-capitalist society. Krentz’s Little Prince interrogates our neglect of imagination and creativity, the lack of depth in our relationships, our worship of material and ephemeral things and meaningless routine – and most of all, our inability to see “with the heart”.
Krentz accomplishes this through a number of smart updates to the source material. The first adaptation is related to the planets, whose inhabitants and context reflect the failings and foibles of today’s society. For example, on the second planet, the vain man is represented in the play by a Social Media Influencer (Gooden) with a compulsive need for approval, admiration, ratings, and followers.The projection used on this planet serves to demonstrate how technology is making humanity self-absorbed and automaton-like. This is a monotonous planet to experience – even for the audience!
On the other hand, the fifth planet’s Lamplighter (who in Saint-Exupery’s original does an important daily job that has been rendered unnecessary by the advent of electricity) becomes a Warehouse Worker (Saeedi). This worker’s exploitation leaves him no time to stop and interact with others, which leads to irremediable consequences. The projection design on this planet uses omnipresent screens to reveal constant light and a sense of never-ending speed, in a city where the most important thing is “producing” endlessly . . . but never stopping to live.
Another innovation of this co-production is the incorporation of the Deaf Planet – a new seventh planet, which precedes the Earth. Here, the Little Prince passes on a light from a box marked with the eye of the world to the Guide of the Deaf Planet (Gooden). This literally illuminating moment reminds us of the drawing of a box made by the Aviator at the play’s start. And it feels like a strong statement about learning to see from inside – from the heart – and sharing the light of solidarity and inclusion.
Expanding our theatrical vocabulary
The Little Prince: A Physical Theatre Adaptation is powerful and poetic, and full of symbolism and analogies that contribute to the creation of a unique visual language. Krentz specializes in Visual Vernacular (VV), a form of artistic expression and storytelling developed within the Deaf community, which he highlights throughout the play. An example is Gooden’s recreation of the flight and crash of the Aviator’s plane, which is exquisitely and almost indescribably embodied in her movements, gestures and vocalizations. Hudson delivers another breathtaking performance in recreating the Rose’s growth on the Little Prince’s planet.
The show also uses an inventive vertical dance – co-produced by Aeriosa Dance Society, and with choreography by Julia Taffe – to establish the bonds between the Little Prince and the characters of the Rose (Gooden), the Racoon (Saeedi), and the Snake (Hudson), generating a unique poetic and visual sensibility. And finally, the projection design by Chris-Liz, arranged as a curtain (a netting fabric) between the apron and the stage, accompanies the story subtly, creatively and expressively – and the body shadows created using the fabric projection, such as the Snake dance, are simply splendid.
In the content of this story and in the way it is told, this world premiere co-production encourages social change and sensitivity in the way we communicate as human beings. The use of American Sign Language (ASL) and Visual Vernacular (VV) injects rich, symbolic, and reflection-inducing wonder into the theatre. Although the show is presented from a deaf perspective, the experience is wonderfully open and will be a revelation to all audience members. (And if you know the original tale from Saint-Exupéry, the inventive updating provides numerous elements to marvel at and ponder.)
Ultimately, The Little Prince: A Physical Theatre Adaptation by Landon Krentz allows the audience to embark on a journey where the essential is glimpsed through non-verbal languages that stimulate sensitivity, thought, and action. This production calls us to awaken the child within us all, in order to recreate, reimagine – and re-communicate– our lives in today’s hyper-verbal, hyper-technological world.
This 80-minute play is presented at Theatre Passe Muraille (16 Ryerson Avenue) until April 19, 2025. Reserve tickets here.
© Alejandra Jimenez, Sesaya Arts Magazine, 2025
