The Start

As i have now idea of how to start my Fmp i decided to start by just reading some of the Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson fairy tales and picking out some that could work well as a theater production to help getting some ideas flowing.

The Strange/Wonderful Musician

A fiddler, wandering in the forest, gets bored and longs for company. He starts to play his fiddle, which draws to him a wolf, fox, and hare, none of which is the company he seeks. Using the animals' admiration for him and playing, he tricks each of them into becoming ensnared or trapped so that he can continue on his way alone. He finds a companion that he seeks, a woodsman, but at that time the wolf has worked itself free, and frees the fox and hare on his way to pursue the musician.

Just as the animals come upon the musician with the goal of doing him mischief, the woodcutter steps in front and protects him with his axe. The animals leave, and the musician thanks the woodcutter with another song, and then leaves.

The White Snake

A wise King receives a covered dish every evening. A servant is curious one night when he retrieves the King's dish, he discovers a coiled white snake under the cover. The servant takes a small bite and discovers that he can now understand and communicate with animals.

Shortly afterwards the servant is accused of stealing the Queen's ring. He is given one day to prove his innocence or submit to punishment. After having given up, he sits awaiting his demise when he overhears a goose complaining about a ring stuck in her throat. The servant leaps up, grabs the goose and hurries to the kitchen. When the cook slits the goose's neck and finds the missing gold ring. The King apologizes and offers the servant land and riches. The servant declines accepting only a little gold and a horse on which to see the countryside.

On his journey to a town the servant first encounters a number of animals in distress, including three fish out of water, ants at risk of being trodden upon, and starving raven fledglings in a nest. In each case the servant heeds the call for help, and in each case the grateful animals respond with "I will remember and return the favour".

In the town the King has announced that he wishes to marry off his daughter, but any suitor must agree to complete an arduous task to the end or be put to death. After one glimpse of the beautiful girl, the young man agrees. The King tosses a golden ring into the sea and tells the young man to retrieve it. He also adds that the young man must either bring the ring back, drown retrieving the ring, or be drowned upon returning without it.

Immediately three fish appear floating a bit of seaweed ahead of them, and on the seaweed rests the King's ring. Astonished, the King agrees to the marriage of his daughter to the young man. However, the daughter sets him upon another task of refilling sacks of grain that she has spilled in the grass. The young man is discouraged because he believes it impossible to gather all of the grain from the ground and he lies down and falls asleep shortly. When he wakes, he looks over at the sacks that were empty the night before. To his surprise, they are now filled with grain with not one grain missing. The Ant King had all of the ants working the entire night to fill them.

Still not satisfied with this suitor, the daughter sends him off on another undertaking to bring her an apple from the Tree of Life. The man did not know where the Tree of Life stood, but he set off anyway. After he had walked through three kingdoms, he heard the three fledglings say that they had retrieved the Golden Apple for him after flying over the sea to the end of the world where the Tree of Life stood. Extremely thankful, the young man took the Golden Apple to the princess, and split it with her. The two married and lived in undisturbed happiness to a great age.

Brother and Sister

Tired of the cruel mistreatment they endure from their wicked stepmother, who is also a witch, a brother and sister run away from home one day. They wander off into the countryside and spend the night in the woods. By morning the boy was thirsty, and so the children go looking for a spring of clear water. But their stepmother has already discovered their escape, and has bewitched all the springs in the forest. The boy was about to drink from one, when his sister heard how its rushing sound said "Whoever drinks from me will become a tiger".

Desperately, the girl begs her brother not to drink from the spring, lest he transform into a tiger and tear her to pieces. So they continue on their way, but when they come to the second spring the girl hears it say, "Whoever drinks from me will become a wolf". Again, she desperately tried to prevent her brother from drinking from it. Reluctantly, he eventually agreed to her pleas but insisted he would drink from the next spring they encountered. And so they arrived at the third spring, and the girl overheard the rushing water cry, "Whoever drinks from me will become a deer". But it was too late, because her brother had already drunk from it, and changed into a deer.

Their stepmother however soon discoversd that they are still alive, and plots against them. One night, she kills the queen and replaces her with her own disfigured daughter, whom she had transformed to resemble her. When the queen's ghost secretly visits her baby's bedside for three consecutive nights however, the king caught on and her stepmother's evil plan was exposed.As the initial feeling of despair cleared up, the children decided to stay and live in the woods forever. The girl would take care of her brother, and tied her gold chain around his neck. They went to live in a little house deep within the woods and lived there happily for some years, until they were disturbed one day by a hunting party and the king himself who had followed the strange deer home. Upon seeing the beautiful girl, he immediately asks her to marry him and she accepts. Thus she became queen and they all live happily in the king's castle. Time passes and the queen gives birth to a son.

The queen comes back to life and her stepfamily are tried for their crimes. The daughter is banished into the woods, where she is torn to pieces by wild animals and her mother is burned at the stake. At the exact moment of her death the boy becomes human again, and at long last the family is reunited. They all lived happily ever after.

The Valiant Little Tailor 

A tailor is preparing to eat some jam, but when flies settle on it, he kills seven of them with one swipe of his hand, or "blow." He makes a belt describing the deed saying "Seven at one blow." Inspired, he sets out into the world to seek his fortune. The tailor meets a Giant who assumes that "Seven at one blow" refers to seven men. The giant challenges the tailor. When the Giant squeezes water from a boulder, the tailor squeezes milk, or whey, from cheese. The Giant throws a rock far into the air, and it eventually lands. The tailor counters the feat by tossing a bird that flies away into the sky; the Giant believes the small bird is a "rock" which is thrown so far that it never lands. Later, the Giant asks the tailor to help him carry a tree. The tailor directs the Giant to carry the trunk, while the tailor will carry the branches. Instead, the tailor climbs on, so the Giant carries him as well, but it appears as if the tailor is supporting the branches.

Impressed, the Giant brings the tailor to the Giant's home, where other giants live as well. During the night, the Giant attempts to kill the tailor by bashing the bed. However, the tailor, having found the bed too large, had slept in the corner. Upon returning and seeing the tailor alive, the other Giants flee in fear of the small man.

The tailor enters the royal service, but the other soldiers are afraid that he will lose his temper someday, and then seven of them might die with every blow. They tell the King that either the tailor leaves military service or they will. Afraid of being killed for sending him away, the king instead sends the tailor to defeat two Giants along with a hundred horsemen, offering him half his kingdom and his daughter's hand in marriage if the tailor can kill the giants. By throwing rocks at the two Giants while they sleep, the tailor provokes the pair into fighting each other until they kill each other, at which time the tailor cuts a small mark near the giants' hearts.

Seeking to prove the tailor and make him earn his reward, the King sends him after a unicorn, but the tailor traps it by standing before a tree, so that when the unicorn charges, he steps aside and it drives its horn into the trunk. The King subsequently sends him after a wild boar, but the tailor traps it in a chapel.

With that, the King marries him to his daughter. The tailor's new wife hears him talking in his sleep and realizes that he is merely a tailor. The King promises to have him carried off. A squire warns the tailor, who pretends to be asleep and calls out that he has done all these deeds and is not afraid of the men behind the door. Terrified, they leave, and the King does not try to assassinate the tailor again. The tailor lives out his days as a king.