Why Kat Sandler updated Anne of Green Gables to be 'more exciting for kids today'
The award-winning Canadian playwright’s new adaptation is on now at the Stratford Festival
In late 2023, Kat Sandler had just wrapped up her play Wildwoman — a sexy, violent reimagining of Beauty and the Beast, based on the shocking true story of Catherine de' Medici. That's when she received a call from the Stratford Festival asking if she'd be interested in adapting Anne of Green Gables for the stage.
"They asked for an adaptation, a straight adaptation with no singing," the award-winning Canadian playwright, screenwriter and director tells Q guest host Garvia Bailey in an interview. "I was like, 'How can I really get in there and make it something that feels like me?'"
Given that Lucy Maud Montgomery's beloved Canadian classic has been adapted countless times (including movies, miniseries, musicals, plays, graphic novels and more), Sandler had to think carefully about how to honour the original material while also putting a fresh spin on it.
The result, which has received rave reviews at this season's Stratford Festival, updates the tale to highlight its relevance and timelessness in 2025. Sandler's version weaves in elements of ancient Greek drama, vaudevillian comedy, metafiction and rom-coms. It also includes a queer confession, interracial romance and a rock concert.
"[It gives] a nostalgia for what we have today that isn't rooted in petticoats and P.E.I. in the 1890s, but lets us look at the beauty and magic of what's actually around us now in 2025," Sandler says.
Though the playwright admits she was "stone-cold terrified" to undertake the project (and perhaps invoke the ire of some diehard Anne purists), she wanted to release herself and audiences of the idea that it could only be done one way.
When she started the adaptation, she listened to the Anne of Green Gables audiobook (narrated by Rachel McAdams) on 1.5 speed to mimic the "velocity of youth" she was hoping to capture in her dialogue.
"Lucy Maud Montgomery is writing from her life — she's describing the nostalgia that she has for her childhood," Sandler explains. "The pieces of it that are me, are me pulling in rom-coms and things that I'm nostalgic for in my childhood…. So that rock concert that you talk about is really an homage to movies like Josie and the Pussycats and that really banger girl-pop moment that I was like, 'I would love to see that on stage as a young girl now.' Because Anne doesn't have to read a poem at a concert, which is still thrilling, but can we see them do something that's really exciting, maybe more exciting for kids today?"
The full interview with Kat Sandler is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts.
Interview with Kat Sandler produced by Catherine Stockhausen.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
