What I learned. . .
Peter Pan is a bitch. That’s what I learned, though not for the first time.
I have sworn for some time that directors shouldn’t be allowed to direct professionally until they’ve tackled Act II, Scene 3 of Peter Pan – in either its play form or musical adaptation. Not only do you have an underground home to set up, you’ve got Lost Boys cleaning up, Wendy reading stories to the Boys as they await Peter’s arrival home, the return of Peter with Tiger Lily and her warriors (and in the musical you’ve got the egregiously titled “Ugg-A-Wug” dance number, rife with its racist, Native American clichés); you’ve got Warriors being routed by Pirates, Pirates capturing and kidnapping Lost Boys, Captain Hook poisoning Peter’s medicine, Tinkerbell drinking Peter’s medicine and nearly dying, Peter reviving the dying Tink (with the audience’s help), and then his eleventh hour exit to rescue Wendy, her brothers, and the Lost Boys. All within a minimal number of pages, supported by very little dialogue. It’s a challenge of precise and careful storytelling in which each step needs to be highlighted so the audience doesn’t get lost or confused or given the chance to simply check out. I was very grateful that this was my fourth outing with the material (my third with the musical). Experience and forehand knowledge really, really helped.
In many ways, directing Peter Pan requires you to summon everything you know about craft. There is little internally developed scene work, except for the extended scene in Act I, when Peter arrives in the Darling’s nursery, encounters Wendy, and invites her to fly with him to Neverland. After that, it is in many ways, a series of events requiring careful planning on the part of a director and his or her designers. How can you keep the action moving seamlessly as it travels from Victorian England to a magical island inhabited by animals, Lost Boys, Pirates, and Warriors, where time and season are very elusive, and where major locales change with alarming frequency?
Fortunately, the group of collaborators Tim Bond, Syracuse Stage’s outgoing Artistic Director assembled for our production proved up to the task. I hadn’t worked before with Linda Buchanan, a Chicago-based set designer, but we seemed to hit it off instantly and I found her endlessly imaginative solutions ingenious and supportive. Susan Branch Towne and Lonnie Alcaraz, both of whom are frequent collaborators, took on the costume and lighting designs, respectively; Jonathan Horner handled the sound design while Syracuse University faculty members Brian Cimmet and Tony Salatino assumed musical direction and choreographic duties.
We assembled a wonderful cast, including Donald Corren (Captain Hook/Mr. Darling), who I had known since he was a high school student in Stockton, California, but with whom I had never worked; Kraig Swartz (Smee), who I’ve also known since his high school days (and who I had directed in two previous productions); and Christine Toy Johnson (Mrs. Darling), with whom I was working for the first time. The rest of the cast was comprised of a large group of gifted and hard-working students from the acclaimed musical theatre training program at Syracuse University, including seniors Troy Hussmann, Dephi Borich, and Ana Marcu, who played Peter, Wendy, and Tiger Lily, respectively. Together I think we managed to conquer the Everest that is Peter Pan, the musical.
From the start Tim was forthright regarding his reservations about the material, having found it exclusionary and racist as a boy. It took him many years to feel comfortable about mounting a production of the play, and I was honored that he thought of me as the right director to help shepherd the production from vision to reality. Several decisions made this a different Peter Pan, beginning with the casting of Troy, a graduating senior in the title role (often played by a female), but further extending to the women warriors who comprised Tiger Lily’s Troupe. We were able to do some simple but significant rewriting of lyrics in the “Ugg-a-wug” song (re-titling it for our production , “Warrior Song”). . . fortunately, the name “Peter Pan” scans exactly with “ugg-a-wug,” which gave me a solid starting point for alterations. Working with Kyle Bass, the Stage’s resident dramaturg, we did our best to expurgate nonsense lyrics and anything that played to Native American clichés and stereotypes. Similarly, Susan and I explored a host of images for inspiration for the ‘look’ of Tiger Lily’s troupe, and based those specific costumes more in the world of Tolkien than in Disney or Rackham and other of Peter Pan’s original illustrators. I believe our efforts succeeded and that we honored the original intent of the story while bringing fresh ideas to the table.
Our casting of an Amer-Asian actress as Wendy led us to the casting of Christine Toy Johnson, also Amer-Asian, as Mrs. Darling which gave the production even greater texture and dimension. I will never forget and always be grateful to Christine for thanking me, shortly after we met at her first rehearsal, for casting a production that “looked like the world in which we live.” In Tiger Lily’s words: enough said.
So much of a director’s work on any production of Peter Pan is determined by the need to fly five different characters to and from Neverland, and we were blessed by the decision to hire theatrical flying and effects specialists, ZFX, to be with us for all flying and technical rehearsals. Our flight director was patient and knowing; he paced rehearsals brilliantly, and taught backstage crew, stage managers, and actors alike with consummate precision, humor, and clarity. When he sensed that Seamus Gailor, the young actor playing Michael Darling, was getting increasingly nervous as his time to go aloft for the first time approached, he took him aside, led him backstage, introduced him to all of the crew and demonstrated for Seamus exactly what would be happening before asking him to take his first exciting, albeit brief , flight. As a result, the flying was always safe and every bit as spectacular as hoped for. (And, I’m happy to report, Seamus took to the London and Neverland skies with relish once he conquered his early apprenhensions.)
Peter Pan is a magical and rewarding piece of theatre in spite of its endless challenges. As I kept reminding the cast, many young people would not just be experiencing the story for the very first time, they would be experiencing their first live theatre production. For those reasons alone the effort that went into what turned out to be an immensely successful production were worth all of the pains taken to create Barrie’s world and to honor his vision. Lives were changed, and none were lost.