Matilda: The Musical

Our goal with Matilda was to bring the wonder of Quentin Blake’s illustrations to life on the stage. Inspired by his watercolor and ink illustrations, Kelly Maryanski was commissioned to create a few backgrounds and an ink and water color motif was used for all transitions. Every time the Trunchbull entered the stage an ink would seep into the projections darkening the colors this was contrasted by a water color saturation any time Matilda’s magic sprung forth. Since Fireside is in the round, a few of the technical parts of the show, such as Amanda being thrown by her pigtails and the chalk writing on the chalkboard, were handled on the projections. Those were a ton of fun to design and animate. What was also a blast to animate were the Acrobat Story sequences. There are four in the show and we conceptualized them as a shadow puppet show that Matilda conjures up with her imagination.