Lamb’s Players Theatre: Till we Have Faces Drama

Till We Have Faces received an overwhelming response as a workshop production at the 1998 C. S. Lewis Centennial Celebration in Cambridge.

That encouraged Lamb’s Players to mount it as a full production in its 1999 season, from 13 August to 19 September. The stage adaptation used a cast of 12 and a vivid and physical theatricality to bring the haunting tale to life.

Celebrating its 28th year, Lamb’s Players is San Diego’s third largest theatre company and maintains the region’s only year round acting company. The non-profit company’s resident theatre is located in the historic Spreckels Building in the charming seaside community of Coronado, just south of San Diego. It also mounts productions throughout the year at the Lyceum Theatre in Horton Plaza, The California Center for the Arts in, Escondido, the Playhouse On Plaza in National City and each December at the Hotel del Coronado. Lamb’s Players Educational Outreach is the largest in the county, reaching over 60,000 students each year.

It is obvious that Lamb’s Players could not perform Till We Have Faces without permission from copyright owner C S Lewis Pte; fortunately, permission was granted. Twenty years ago, Lamb’s Players was not so lucky. The group had assumed that copyright to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was owned by Christians operating in the spirit of C. S. Lewis. Thus they invested months in preparing a wonderful stage version and advertising it before they approached C S Lewis Pte for approval. To their dismay and grief, they were ordered not to perform it. Preview audiences had raved about it, and ticket holders as well as cast were crushed about the cancellation. Lamb’s Players never went public about the unexpected refusal.

As one might suspect from its name, this theater group began as a Christian ministry and is still a public-spirited nonsectarian ministry. For interesting information, see http://www.lambsplayers.org/Pages/home.html, the Lamb’s Players website