Humanity gets in the way for man who signs on as Death’s apprentice
There is no other way to describe Terry Pratchett’s Discworld than as fantasy.
Just look at the setting for the 41book series — Discworld is a realm in which the world is flat, balanced on the backs of four elephants, balanced on the back of a giant turtle as it swims through space.
This is the world the University of Regina Theatre Student’s Association had to deal with in presenting Mort, a play based on the fourth book in the series. While the books are extremely popular worldwide, many people haven’t been exposed to series and that includes most of the cast of the production.
“I had to address that one the first day of rehearsal because so few people involved with the show had ever encountered the books in any way, shape or form,” explained director Landon Walliser. “I gave about a 20-minute long introductory lesson on it with that description as the opening.”
Yet the books aren’t just fantasy for the sake of fantasy — Pratchett includes business, politics and religion. His ability to touch intelligently on serious issues has put Pratchett in some serious company.
“There recently was an article in The Guardian that said the Discworld series is comparable to contemporary Shakespeare because it reaches such a broad audience and touches upon such a wide swath of issues,” said Walliser. “It includes those issues in a delicate way without ever pulling back or ever being afraid it. It just deals with these issues a human things.
“There’s a quote by Neil Gaiman, taken from his eulogy of Pratchett, that captures the man perfectly — ‘Terry Pratchett wasn’t the one who would yell at you in the bar. He was the one who would sidle up to you, put his arm around you and tell you that the world was terrible and exactly how to make it better.’”
The play, which opened on Tuesday, follows Mort, a bored young man who accepts an offer from Death to become his apprentice. He soon realizes his humanity is at odds with the responsibilities of being Death’s apprentice.
“Our far greatest challenge was bringing Death to life, because it’s the most inhuman character,” said Walliser. “It was also a challenge to encompass the scope of the world because there’s like 25 different scenes in the play and literally every one of them are across this world from each other. We had to figure out a way to do that.”
When asked if making the fantasy world real was a challenge, Walliser replied, “No, it was surprisingly easy because most of the characters in this one are human compared to some of the other books. We also have the benefit of not having to adapt the book ourselves. It was adapted by Stephen Briggs who had worked very closely with Terry Pratchett.”