This weekend opened the UNC Charlotte’s New Works Festival in collaboration with the Children’s Theatre of Charlotte. The Paperbag Princess, Michelle Long’s adaptation of Robert Munsch and Michael Martchenko’s 1980 children’s book, is a play for young audiences about a princess who loses everything to a dragon apocalypse, defeats said dragon in order to rescue her fiance from certain death, and returns to her paper bag castle newly single but content in the knowledge that she’s an incredible bad-ass. It sounds sweet, and it is sweet — until you see the book’s illustrations. Because when the dragon destroyed the princess’s kingdom, he killed everyone and everything, including the horses.
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