Peter and the Starcatcher - November 2019

Thoughts on the play…

“If we unlock the rooms of the far past, we can peer in and see ourselves busily occupied in beginning to become you and me.” J.M. Barrie

Some may think this prequel to the classic children’s tale, Peter Pan, to be a strange choice for a largely adult and academic audience. What value can a child’s play possibly add to our lives as developing and practicing adults who are busy making choices, building alliances and devising strategies for living the good life?

“We cannot avoid growing up and developing our minds,” Nachmanovitch suggests. “Still, let us try to recover, to some extent, the vast consciousness of the child – who sees everything for the first time”, who sees everything as though they had never seen it before. And so, the conversation continues – between the man and the boy, the woman and the young girl. What does it mean to be an adult – whatever that means? This is not so much a story about a boy who won’t grow up as it is an ongoing conversation between that child and the adult we have become. Our play adds a key character to the story – Molly Aster. Molly adds an important and necessary voice to the conversation as she and Peter debate the qualities of leadership.

“Girls dream too!”

Being now of a certain age (how did that happen?), I must admit that I have always had an affection for the story of Peter Pan. Working on this play for the past months with these students has been a great personal journey as well – as all good directing experiences should be. The experience has given us an opportunity to look at not just what we have forgotten – but what we have forgotten we have forgotten. The play offers us help to find things we may not even know we have lost. Adult life often requires a pace and focus that is full of forgetting. It has given all of a us chance to look at our experiences before the locks of expectation were placed on our imaginations, trimmed and neatened as if it were an optional extra. In his defense of fantasia, Aristotle suggested that it was essential to imagine what might be or should be or even could never be.

Imagination is not optional: it is at the heart of everything, the thing that allows us to experience the world from the perspective of others. Playing with this play has given us space to find our way back to a time when new discoveries came daily and unpredictably – when the world was colossal and possibilities seemed infinite.  I designed the world of the play as an immersive, participatory experience for you, our audience, as well. As you sit vis a vis the ships, the beach and the jungle, we hope that you will lean into the action and give yourself permission to play along with us. “What if…”

In this bittersweet story of passages, we are asked what it might be like to bring our child self along with us and not simply say goodbye.