Six impossible things before broadcast.

 HMS Media’s newest PBS special Lookingglass Alice arrives Friday December 15 at 9pm Eastern/8pm Central. Producer Scott Silberstein reflects on making the impossible… possible.

“One can’t believe impossible things,” says Alice, in HMS’ newest national PBS special Lookingglass Alice, a stage-to-screen adaptation of a David Catlin’s staggeringly entertaining original adaption of the “Alice in Wonderland” stories, performed by Lookingglass Theatre Company and premiering December 15 at 9pm Eastern/8pm Central on PBS (and available to stream at PBS.org after that).

“I daresay you haven't had much practice,” replies Charles Dodgson. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

 That might as well be a required pledge that any of us who want to create for stage or screen must take. Most of our hopes and dreams to create something beautiful out of nothing feel impossible. So to bring Lookingglass Alice to PBS, I found that I needed to believe in Six Impossible Things Before Broadcast:

IMPOSSIBLE THING #1: That we could stay alive.

 Because let’s be honest, at the onset of the pandemic, it felt like those folks carrying “the end is nigh” signs might have been right. Survival was not guaranteed. I and everyone I know lost someone they knew to COVID.  We didn’t know if we could afford to believe we’d make it.

But we chose to believe in Impossible Thing #1: that we could survive.

Look what happened.

IMPOSSIBLE THING #2: That we could keep HMS Media alive.

HMS produces broadcast and streaming content with performing arts companies and social service organizations, but come March 2020 the world was neither performing nor being social. There was no good reason to think we would make it.

With government support to prevent our immediate demise, and some nimble and decidedly improvisational thinking within our ranks, we started creating content that people could access on their screens. We believed in Impossible Thing #2: that we could keep our company alive.  

Look what happened.

IMPOSSIBLE THING #3: That we could gather in public and tell stories again.

 After the quaint, halcyon days when we thought we’d be shut down until maybe Labor Day, the harsh reality sunk in: we would not be sitting together in theaters for a long time, if ever.

Pundits throughout the sector, across the media and around the world predicted the end of theater as we know it (they’re still doing it now).

We believed then (as we believe now) that if the performing arts sector could both evolve while staying true to its nature, it would survive, but we believed we could. And so we believed in Impossible Thing #3: that we would gather in public and tell stories again.

Look what happened.

IMPOSSIBLE THING #4: That, having gotten PBS to say “Sure, we’ll air Lookingglass Alice,” we could actually make it.

It does not require a television professional to know that Lookingglass Alice is damn near perfect theater that is equally damn near impossible to capture on camera.  My brilliant director (and HMS co-founder) Matt Hoffman, our visionary editor Christie Fall and I are television professionals, and we agree with you. It’s damn near impossible.

Which is of course why we said, “Let’s do it anyway.”

I’ve wanted to bring Lookingglass Alice to television since the first time I saw it. I always felt that the right kind of capture and presentation could not only boost Lookingglass’ profile and convey the magic it so regularly creates, but it could also do for television audiences what Lookingglass has done for its live audiences for thirty-five years: change, charge and empower them.

Matt’s stellar direction and Christie’s extraordinary editing, all made possible by an all-star  team of video, audio and media artists, have resulted in a show that is both deeply artful and wildly entertaining.

Our team believed in each other, Lookingglass believed in us, and together we believed in Impossible Thing #4: that we could actually translate this decidedly unshootable play into an inviting and compelling piece of television.

And look what happened.

IMPOSSIBLE THING #5: That PBS would be interested in broadcasting a regional theater production like Lookingglass Alice.

Don’t get me wrong, we were hopeful. HMS’ 26 Emmys and 41 nominations are all for programs produced for and with public television. We have a great relationship with PBS, with credits like Great Performances: Chicago Voices and First You Dream: The Songs of Kander & Ebb. PBS is the only American broadcast and streaming outlet that commits dollars and scheduling real estate to the extraordinary American arts and culture sector, one that not only creates work offering us connection, understanding, insight, empathy, compassion and community but also has profound impacts on education, health care both physical and mental, technology and, yes, the economy, to which it brings $1 trillion in activity, more than transportation, warehouse or manufacturing. Showcasing the arts is the smart, responsible and humane thing to do, and PBS does it, one of many reasons they deserves our support (another being that the federal government supplies only about 15% of their budget, making PBS a bit less “public” than most of its detractors would have you unfairly believe).

But even with all of that, how were we going to convince PBS to devote two hours of its national primetime schedule to a performance not by the Metropolitan Opera or the original cast of Hamilton but instead a Chicago theater company? This is something that hadn’t happened since Steppenwolf’s production of The Grapes of Wrath, and even that esteemed production had to go to Broadway first.

Pitching the idea required belief that Lookingglas Alice was the right story, Lookingglass and HMS were the right storytellers, and PBS was the right, the perfect, the only place for this story to be told.

With the deepest possible passion and conviction, we expressed to PBS our belief in Impossible Thing #4. Bless them, so did they.

And look what happened.

IMPOSSIBLE THING #6: That anyone else would be interested in what we’d done.

We sympathize with our friends who work in this media landscape, one where time and resources are tight and in which, against human nature and seemingly the personal feelings and judgement of many who control it, the focus gravitates disproportionately on that which disrupts, alienates, frightens and angers us. It’s easy to dismiss what is arguably 2023’s most genuinely good story about an enormously positive development for American regional theater when there’s a fear that the dark side will lead to fewer readers, followers and clicks.

We who support, live and work in the arts have a different take. We’re in that rare field where we make things and, generally speaking, people want us to succeed. No one wants to see a bad show. They’d much prefer to have a transformative experience. And because we’re practicing our arts and crafts in front of real people in real time, we get proved right over and over. I feel sad for people who don’t have that. It’s much easier to be fearful when you’re isolated from your audience.

The work we do requires being in front of and surrounded by people. We see, hear and above all feel what they want, need and like. And we are reminded that people are in varying ways social creatures who long to belong and connect, who crave understanding and who deeply want to be understood.

That’s why HMS, Lookingglass, PBS, the cast, the crew, the unions, and everyone else who worked on Lookingglass Alice believed in Impossible Thing #6: that it was possible that there were writers and critics who could be inspired by what we had done and editors who could be persuaded to let those writers share their stories.

And look what happened: The Wall Street Journal wrote that HMS’ production of Lookingglass Alice was”acrobatic, slapstick, quietly dramatic and magical,” and invited viewers to “savor the charms of Alice.” Best of all they wrote, “the benefits (of the television coverage) include an intimacy with the performers that a live audience doesn’t get, and makes viewers wish they had been there.”

That is EXACTLY what we aimed to do with this broadcast version of Lookingglass Alice, which the Associated Press described as “innovative and thrilling and a lovely metaphor for life” in a feature review that has since been published in scores of papers and websites around the world.

I have six more impossible things I’m eager to believe, if anyone wants to go grab coffee sometime. But for now, just consider the moral of this story:

Believe in the power of storytelling, the absolute essential nature of theater, that Impossible Things are far more likely merely improbable actually quite possible.

 And then… watch what happens.