Daingerfield alum adapts children’s book for stage

Shane Strawbridge, a 2001 alumnus of Daingerfield High School, has been commissioned by the Hollins Theatre Institute to write a stage adaptation of the awardwinning children’s book, Marvelous Cornelius, by Phil Bildner. The play will tour schools in Roanoke, Virginia this winter, then open on Mill Mountain Theatre’s Trinkle Stage on Jan. 28, 2017.

At Daingerfield High School, Strawbridge was an honor student and participated in many extracurricular activities. He graduated in the top 10 and received the 2001 “Ideal Student” award from the Twentieth Century Club. Strawbridge has had his plays performed across the country. Several of his plays will be published in December by Polychoron Press. As an actor, Strawbridge has been nominated for and won many awards. He was named one of Dallas-Fort Worth’s best actors by CBS in 2011.

The original book, Marvelous Cornelius, has won multiple awards for Phil Bildner, including the Margaret Wise Brown Medal for Children’s Literature. In the story, readers find themselves in New Orleans, where they meet a man named Cornelius Washington who saw the streets as his calling, and he swept them clean. He danced up one avenue and down another and everyone danced along. The old ladies whistled and whirled. The old men hooted and hollered. The barbers, bead twirlers, and beignet bakers bounded behind that one-man parade. But then came the rising Mississippi—and a storm greater than anyone had seen before.

Ernie Zulia, Director of the Hollins Theatre Institute said the following of Strawbridge: “In addition to being a terrific playwright, Shane Strawbridge is an inventive and creative educator, and an accomplished musician and composer. We knew he was the perfect person to bring this wonderful book to the stage.”

Playwright Strawbridge said, “When Ernie approached me with the idea to adapt Marvelous Cornelius for the stage, I was very excited. The truelife tale of a sanitation worker in Hurricane Katrina era New Orleans is certainly a unique journey. Being able to take Phil’s words from the page and bring them to life as a work of theatre is quite an honor, and one that I don’t take lightly.”