You’ve recently studied and analyzed an old-time, original fairy tale, one that was likely quite a stark contrast to the type of enjoyable and reassuring fairy tales you’re used to in more modern times.

Examples of the extremes of older, original fairy tales includes:

• Fairy tales where a woman hated/wanted revenge on a young, beautiful woman so they arranged for her to be killed and her heart cut out and brought to them
• a fairy tale where a young potential bride was lured into a house where killers and rapists cut up a woman while she hid

Newer fairy tales, the ones we read to kids today, don’t include such gruesome and horrible storylines. And for good reason!

Your task in this assignment is to write the dialogue exchange between an interviewer and the main character of the original fairy tale you read. In that conversation, the interviewer wants to challenge the character on the messages and potentially dangerous influence their “story” would be to today’s kids. 

• The Interviewer could be:
  • You, yourself
  • Ellen Degeneres
  • Oprah
  • Joe Rogan etc
  • Dax Shepard (Armchair Expert)
• The Interviewed Person is the main character of your original version of the fairy tale you choose
  • you’ll have to draw parts of that character’s back story (where they live, who they’re related to, what they feared, their goals or hopes, what dangers were there against them, enemies and influences, etc)
  • Elements from this character’s story that you may challenge them on or question them about may include:
    • the message their story would leave with young boys about the roles males play in society
    • the message their story in particular would leave with young girls, about how girls should interact in their society (wait for a rescuer, be valued for beauty and virtue, etc)
    • the potential message shared about what is good in the world – beauty over being a good person, bravery over relying on others for help, maintaining power and riches, etc
    • what possible ideas could the original story leave with today’s kids about their relationship with their parents – that they could be left somewhere if their parents cannot afford to care for them anymore, that they could be targets of violence, that old people will want to hurt young people, etc
    • what types of individuals can be seen as heroes, only men? only young people? only the ones who use force and violence?

Resources for Planning: 

• Website: Examples of Open-Ended and Close-Ended Questions – interviewers avoid using questions that can have a yes/no answer
• Website: Open-Ended and Behaviour Based Interview Questions – List of common interview questions for the background of the fairy tale character
• Website: Encouragers, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing – natural responses (spoken or non-verbal) for the interviewer to encourage the speaker (interviewee) to continue in their response to a question

Script Writing Resources:

The interview conversation will be written out in Script Form with the goal it is performed as a Stage Play.

To see samples of short stage scripts, try these:

• Duck Tale stage play sample pages (you can recognize how the page/parts of it are formatted)
• YPF Sample Script (start reading page 1 for page format)