Kim Carpenter’s Theatre of Image has been staging high quality and unique theatrical experiences for Australian and international audiences since 1988. They often work in collaboration with other artists and arts organisations, such as Kagaboushi Theatre Company in Japan for Lulie the Iceberg, or the Manitoba Theatre for Young People in Winnipeg, Canada where they staged a version of their successful Australian production of The Happy Prince. In December 2009, Theatre of Image will premiere their latest production, The Book of Everything, at Sydney’s Belvoir Street Theatre. Tracy Ellis caught up with Carpenter on day one of rehearsals.

Kim Carpenter was browsing in the Megalong Bookstore in Leura in the Blue Mountains, when he discovered Dutch author GuusKuijer’s novel for young people, The Book of Everything. Carpenter wasn’t looking for a project, just something good to read. ‘I found it very funny, very moving, and very unusual,’ he says, and describes it as, ‘a universal story about a boy whose greatest wish is to be happy.’

Carpenter read the book in one sitting and said to himself: ‘I can see it in three dimensions, with actors on the stage.’ Kuijer is a highly regarded children’s author in Holland, but this is the first of his books to be translated into English. Coincidentally, the …