Our 18/19 Season, featuring published work based in fairytale and wonder, kicks off with Peter and the Starcatcher. A celebration of "all"-ness as written in the text itself, Peter and the Starcatcher offers the unique opportunity for our students to bring their brilliant imaginations, idiosyncratic personalities, and child-like abandon to the work in a celebration of both their artistic creativity and personal selves.
Through embracing the traditions in which theatre was founded upon (traveling troupes, puppetry, magic, improvisation) and the elements of the stage that make theatre exciting to a young and modern audience (music, intelligent lighting, dynamic sets and props), our production aims to merge what was with what is in order to illuminate what can be. Our goal is never to recreate but rather to bring to life calling on the audience to engage as active spectators, (as famous theatrical philosopher and practitioner Bertolt Brecht branded) employing both their suspension of disbelief and most importantly their imagination. In this way, our ensemble of actors includes the audience as part of our theatrical troupe, participating in the storytelling themselves, further expanding this notion of “all-ness” to our greater community.
While this production is an homage to the past (incorporating a raked stage, footlights, etc.), it is just as much a promise for the future, as further emphasized in the text's incorporation of the cultural now. By coming together in creativity, accessed by a common understanding that transcends time (the original fairytale of Peter Pan), our students, our audiences, and our community are able to celebrate all that makes theatre — and themselves — truly unique, immediate, impactful and everlasting.
