Some authors complain about the way their books are adapted. But prolific Australian children's book author Andy Griffiths is very happy about how and why his Treehouse series is being translated to the stage.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
"What I like about it is that this way I can experience the books in a very similar way to to how my readers experience them," he says.
"You can't 'read' your own books, you're too close to them, you're inside them."
But because the medium is different and the books have been adapted by others, he is able to sit back and enjoy the experience of watching the story unfold along with everybody else.
The 26-Storey Treehouse, coming soon to the Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, is no exception. It's the sequel to The 13-Storey Treehouse and in it, Terry ("the clown") and Andy ("the clever trickster character") are back at the even bigger treehouse with more inventions like the 78 flavour ice-cream dispensing robot, the Maze of Doom and the self-inflating underpants.
Will Terry and Andy push their friend Jill to her absolute limits? Then there's the shady Hector Houtkop with his really bad pirate accent.
The first in the Treehouse series, The 13-Storey Treehouse, was published in 2011 and was adapted to the stage the following year. Both books and plays have kept coming, at different paces – The 65-Storey Treehouse was published on August 12 (and Dymocks reported it was the fastest selling Australian book in the last 10 years, with first day sales reaching more than 2250) and the stage version of The 52-Storey Treehouse will have its premiere in September – with 13 storeys added in each instalment.
Why 13?
"It was a random accident," Griffiths says. The first time Denton drew the treehouse, it had 13 storeys, and it seemed an appropriate number with its mystical connotations ("100 years ago it was a lucky number, in modern times it's unlucky") so they kept on using it.
How many more storeys can they add? And how many more books and plays can there be?
"We'll see – book by book it's getting more and more complex," Griffiths says.
With so many storeys and characters and incidents being added with each new book, there might come a point where it's too difficult, logistically and economically, to stage them, even with a heaping helping of imagination in the mix.
But Griffiths says there will be at least a couple more books to come in the series.
"There's no limit to imagination in books."
This quality of imagination is one of the reasons he thinks books have endured, as well as their intimacy: they are designed to be enjoyed alone or with one or two others, for example as a bedtime story,
The stage shows have their own appeal as a communal experience and have been very popular too and as well as keeping his profile up, they have another advantage for Griffiths: he can't physically travel around the country to see all his fans and keep writing regularly, so his stage-character persona effectively does that for him.
But he's in no hurry to have the books adapted into movies. He thinks the old-fashioned methods of storytelling - books and theatre - are satisfying enough for his stories and is happy for them to keep it that way for now.
"I like movies, but there are enough of them."
The 26-Storey Treehouse. By Richard Tulloch. Adapted from the book written by Andy Griffiths and illustrated by Terry Denton. Directed by Liesel Badorrek. A CDP Production. Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre. August 25-28. Tickets $20/$15. Bookings: theq.net.au.
