Kentish Express Ashford & District - What's On
TRAGEDY INSPIRES TALE
The human – and natural – tragedy of the 2004 tsunami is brought to life in an enchanting stage show of former Children’s Laureate Michael Morpurgo’s book, Running Wild. What’s On spoke to the author and conservationist and founder of Born Free Foundation
Michael Morpurgo had two favourite books as a boy, The Elephant’s Child from Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories and The Jungle Book.
Both featured elephants and they have fascinated him ever since. In fact, he had longed to write his own novel about a child and an elephant.
“My mother used to read
The Elephant’s Child to me and it made me giggle and laugh. Kipling used such wonderful language in his stories and these two in particular, which also left me with a love of elephants – so much so that I wanted to write my own about an elephant and its bond with a child. I couldn’t see how I could do it, so tried to forget about it.” Then came the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami that killed 300,000 people.
“The stories that emerged were horrible,” he said. “But then I read one about a family who had been on holiday and on that beach when it happened. A boy had begged his mother to let him have an elephant ride. Finally she agreed and off he went. He was there with the elephant and his handler when the sea went so far out exposing great swathes of the beach.
“No one knew what was happening but the elephant began to get agitated. He struggled, breaking free of his handler, and with the boy still on his back charged up the beach and ran away from the danger and deep into the forest.”
The story – which had a happy ending for the family, who were reunited – was his inspiration.
“There was the story right there in front of me that I had longed to write – a story that I could create of my own about an elephant and a child and one not connected to Kipling.” Michael researched elephants, the tsunami, and rainforests and the animals that live there for Running Wild.
Based on the story, it tells of Will, who goes on holiday to Indonesia with his mum and gets to ride an elephant on the beach but when a tsunami hits, the elephant senses danger and, charging deep into the jungle, escapes the beach with its young rider clinging on. Will must then survive in the rainforest, surrounded by the animals there.
He says of the stage adaptation: “I didn’t think it was adaptable for the stage. I went to see it and it was enchanting, absolutely magical.
“They had recreated the jungle of Indonesia in this forest, with amazing and ingenious puppets. To see the whole jungle unfold and the child on the back of the elephant was out of this world.”
The production now on tour is supporting the Born Free Foundation, set up in 1984 by Virginia Mckenna, her late husband Bill Travers and eldest son Will following the death of a teenage elephant in a zoo. He has also met the child the story is based on, a girl named Amber Owen, now in her 20s. Virginia, who has helped him with research for books in the past, said: “Born Free Foundation’s work is very much in sympathy with the soul of the play and respecting animals. I went to see it last year with two of my grandchildren.
It was sensational, so magical and thrilling and we absolutely loved it. In fact my granddaughter burst into tears at the end.
“It is the most beautiful story... the perfect family show.”
‘There was the story right there in front of me that I had longed to write – a story that I could create of my own about an elephant and a child...’