WILLIAM AND THE SEA
PEOPLE
• contains references
to : Peter Pan, Robinson
Crusoe and Treasure
Island.
• William doesn’t find
the small objects in the
game, vital for winning.
small things can make
between FAILURE AND
SUCCESS.
Scene 1: The Beach
William
plays a
video game : an old game
called “William and the
Sea People”.
He wants to go to the
aquarium with his friend
Jenny.
William tries to play but
loses and says that it is
stupid.
The computer talks to
him and says that he can
stay at the bottom of the
sea.
Scene 2: The Bottom of
the Sea
William
is chained to an anchor.
Neptune and Ondine tell
William that Jennifer is a
prisoner of Captain Hook
. He has to free Jenny if
he wants
to be free
The Genie
will help him.
Scene 3: The Desert
Island
William
is free and sees
Robinson
Crusoe and
Sunday They tell William
he can’t stop playing
because he must free
Jenny
Robinson
gives
William a
bottle with
a
parchment
:
“In the Coral Reef find
a Key.
On the Pirates’ Ship
find a Map.
In the
Siren’s
Cave find a Compass.”
William puts
the parchment
on the floor. He sees the
Genie: now he has three
wishes.
Scene
4: The
Coral
Reef
Fish
of all types swim. William
wears a snorkel, mask and
flippers. He finds an
oyster shell which
contains the key!
William tells the second
wish:
Scene 5: The Pirates’
Ship
William arrives in the port
and watches Captain
Hook and Smee.
Hook gives Smee the
Treasure Map. Smee puts
the map under his hat.
Hook asks Smee for the
key, but Smee can’t find
it.
William wants the
Treasure Map.
Smee thinks the key must
be in the sea.
William takes Smee’s hat,
Smee jumps into the sea,
and William takes the
map.William calls the
Genie for the last wish.
Scene 6: The Siren’s
Cave
William and the Genie see
the Siren.
William asks her if she has
the compass. She says
yes.
The Siren says that we
must listen and ask for
help.
William finishes his
wishes.
Scene 7: The Voyage
William is alone in the
Treasure Island. With the
map and compass
Scene 8: Treasure Island
William arrives but
Jennifer is no there. Hook
says that William has
something: the key!
William denies so Hook
asks the audience and the
audience shouts back
“NO!”. If he gives him the
key he will free Jennifer.
So William gives him the
key, but Jennifer is with
the sharks.
William fights Hook.
Jennifer arrives and takes
Hook’s sword and forces
Hook until he falls into
the sea.
William is the first person
to reach level eight. Using
the Treasure Map they
find the treasure chest
and open it with the key.
It is full of jewellery and
coins.
The voice of the computer
announces that William
won the game.
Scene 9: The Beach
William is on the beach.
His father arrives looking
for the book: “Robinson
Crusoe”.
Scene 10: The Aquarium
William is with Jenny at
the aquarium. Jenny
is happy with the gift. She
goes in the next room and
sees the sharks. William
looks and for a moment
thinks he can see Hook’s
face among them.
Background notes
The Characters
Several characters are
from classic British fiction
(Hook, Robinson
Crusoe) or from
mythology and fable
(Neptune, Ondine, Genie,
Siren).
Captain Hook
Hook is the famous villain
from the classic
children’s story, Peter
Pan, written by James
Barrie (1860-1937).
James Barrie, was a
Scottish dramatist and
novelist (recently played
by Johnny Depp
in the film “Finding
Neverland”), whose
works, both theatrical and
non-theatrical, stress his
personal ironic view of life
as a romantic
adventure.
The first performance of
Barrie’s now worldfamous fairy-tale play,
Peter Pan was in 1904. In
this fantasy, Barrie dealt
with his two
favourite themes, the
retention of childish
innocence and what he
conceived to be the
feminine instinct for
motherhood.
Robinson Crusoe
Daniel Defoe, (16601731), was an English
novelist and journalist,
whose work reflects his
diverse experiences in
many countries and
in many walks of life.
Defoe’s first and most
famous novel, The Life
and Strange Surprizing Adventures of
Robinson Crusoe, of
York, Mariner, appeared
in
1719, when he was almost
60 years old. The book is
commonly
known as Robinson
Crusoe. A fictional tale of
a shipwrecked sailor,
12
Arcadia Productions
it was based on the
adventures of a seaman,
Alexander Selkirk, who
had been marooned on
one of the Juan Fernández
Islands off the
coast of Chile, now called
Isla Róbinson Crusoe.
Robinson Crusoe is a
story of adventure and
ingenuity, and also a
travel narrative in which
the hero journeys to
Africa, Brazil, China,
and Siberia, and then is
shipwrecked on a deserted
island. But to
view the novel as simply a
fascinating travelogue is
to ignore much
of what makes it valuable
and interesting to modern
readers.
Throughout the narrative,
Defoe details an
individual’s struggle to
survive in basically hostile
surroundings. As part of
his day-to-day
existence, Robinson
Crusoe faces starvation,
illness, pain, possible
insanity, even danger from
cannibals. Through
ingenuity, hard work,
and common sense, he
improvises many of the
comforts to which he
was accustomed in
England. Crusoe never
broods about his isolation; rather he occupies
his time productively and
triumphs over his
unpromising environment,
thus becoming an example
of the triumph
of the human spirit.
The novel has become
one of the classics of
children’s literature.
Defoe authored only one
novel for young people.
He is recognized
today as an important
figure in the development
of the novel, and as
a master of narrative
realism.
Neptune
Neptune, in Roman
mythology, is the god of
the sea, son of the god
Saturn, and brother of
Jupiter, king of the gods.
Originally a god of
springs and streams, he
became identified with the
Greek god of the
sea, Poseidon.
Ondine
Ondine was a water
nymph in German
mythology. She was very
beautiful and (like all
nymphs) immortal. The
only threat to a
nymph’s eternal
happiness is if she falls in
love with a mortal and
bears his child - she will
lose her gift of everlasting
life.
Genie
In Western fiction, after
the Aladdin tale in the
Western version of
The Book of One
Thousand and One
Nights, genies typically
come
from small oil lamps and
grant three wishes to the
person who
rubbed the lamp to
release the genie while
more mischievous ones
take advantage of poorly
worded wishes.
Alternately, they may
grant
a single wish per day.
The word was first used in
English as “geny” to
mean a guardian
spirit, with the first
recorded use in 1655. The
word came from the
French genie, which in
turn came from the
original Latin word genius, for a spirit.
Siren
The Siren was a sea
nymph in Greek
mythology, sometimes de-
scribed as having the
body of a bird and the
head of a woman or like
mermaids: half woman,
half fish. The Sirens are
the daughters of a
sea god. The Sirens had
such sweet voices that
sailors who heard
their songs were lured
into grounding their boats
on the rocks on
which the nymphs sang. A
similarity exists between
the stories concerning mermaids and
those told about the
Sirens, though mermaids
originate in different
legends
Objects and Places
Many tales of the sea,
pirates and desert islands
have introduced
phrases into the language.
The popularity of such
tales, in fact we
are continuing to add to
these tales with stories
such as Finding
Nemo.
Treasure Island
Robert Louis Stevenson
was born in 1850, in
Edinburgh, Scotland,
the only child of a
prosperous, middle-class
family. Stevenson was
forced to ask his parents
for money to supplement
the meagre income from his writing
efforts.
During a cold, wet
summer in Scotland in
1881, Stevenson drew a
treasure map for his
stepson — thus originating
the world of Treas14
ure Island. Stevenson set
to work creating a story
to accompany the
map, and published the
novel in 1883. Treasure
Island is a swiftly
paced story of a search
for buried gold and evil
pirates.
Stevenson later settled in
the British health resort
of Bournemouth,
where he wrote Kidnapped
and Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde, both of
which were published in
1886.
Although Stevenson’s
reputation has declined
since his death, he
is still recognized as a
master storyteller, and
Treasure Island and
Kidnapped remain among
the most popular
adventure stories of all
time for young readers.
Pirates
Piracy is the crime of
robbery on the high seas
committed by the
captain or crew of a ship
outside the normal
jurisdiction of any nation, and without
authority from any
government. The persons
who
engage in acts of piracy
are called pirates. Pirates
are regarded as
common enemies of all
people. In that nations
have an equal interest in their apprehension
and punishment; pirates
may be lawfully
captured on the high seas
by the armed vessels of
any state and
brought within its
territorial jurisdiction for
trial in its tribunals.
In municipal law, the term
piracy has been extended
to cover crimes
other than those defined
above, such as the illegal
copying of CDs
and DVDs.
Coral Reef
A Coral Reef is a ridge or
elevated part of a
relatively shallow area of
the seafloor, approaching
the sea’s surface. It is
formed by a rocklike
accumulation of calciumcontaining skeletons of
coral animals, red
algae, and molluscs. Built
up layer by layer by living
corals growing
on top of the skeletons of
past generations, coral
reefs grow upward
at rates of 1 to 20 cm per
year. Coral reefs are
tropical, forming only
where surface waters are
never cooler than 20° C.