Sasparella Trauffea is Dancing!: An Original Radio Play

Sasparella Trauffea is Dancing! is the winning script from the 20/21 KVSC & GREAT Scriptwriting Competition.

Author’s Bios
Meg Mechelke

Local playwright Meg Mechelke is a second year student at the University of Iowa. Far from her hometown of Sartell, MN, she is studying English and theatre and is heavily involved in the campus’s theatre and publication scenes. Her work has appeared both on stage and in print at the university and beyond, and she is excited to be going back to her “GREAT” roots with this project.

Author’s Note

The first play I ever saw at GREAT—quite possibly the first play I saw ever—was the 2006 production of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. I was six years old, and I was TERRIFIED. My sole memory of that production is sitting crouched on the floor in the first row of the Paramount balcony, hiding behind the safety rail so that the wolves wouldn’t be able to “get me.” Here began a two-pronged fascination: with theatre and with fairytales.

Thus, it isn’t actually all that surprising that I am making my return to the world of GREAT today with a piece of theatre that is, at its heart, both a celebration and a queering of the fairytale genre, in particular the “happily ever after” ideal we all long for. It seems like a simple concept. Belle marries the Beast, Cinderella finds her prince, Buttercup escapes with Wesley… Of course, today we understand that this idea of a happy ending doesn’t have to include a man, or even a romance. Today when we tell kids to “follow their dreams” and to “dream big,” we mean “get away from your hometown, go to a fancy college, and find yourself a six-figure job in a big city.” In a way, this is just as limiting as the heteronormative, patriarchal concept of every story ending in a marriage. We are obsessed with the idea that living happily ever after means something huge and life-changing and dramatic, which is, frankly, as silly and reductive as it is unrealistic.

Thus, when I tell say that this play is about following your dreams, I don’t mean finding some huge, existential purpose in life or making a million dollars. I mean that this play is about finding the thing that brings you joy, the thing that matters most to you in the whole world, and never, ever letting it go. Enjoy!

xo,
Meg Mechelke