Petersburg High School debuts its spring play on Thursday, February 29th, at 6:30 p.m. “Peter and the Starcatcher” is a prequel to the J.M. Barrie classic, “Peter Pan.” It’s also one of the longest plays to reach Petersburg’s stage in several years — it’s about two hours of swashbuckling fun.
KFSK’s Shelby Herbert has more on the blood, sweat, and pixie dust Petersburg students have poured into the production.
It’s two days before the first curtain call, and I’m watching the chaos of “tech week” unfold onstage. The Wright Auditorium is alive with the rustling of hoop skirts and the clattering of wooden cargo containers. About a dozen students in homespun Victorian era costumes reel around the auditorium, retracing their blocking, parroting their lines to one another, transforming the stage into the deck of a 19th century wooden ship.
Petersburg High School senior Kinley Lister is hurriedly tying on a white pinafore. She plays one of the leads: Molly Astor, the titular “Starcatcher,” who is on a secret mission to protect a trunk of magical stardust.
“Our story is kind of like the prequel to Peter Pan,” said Lister. “And so, [my character is] friends with Peter Pan before he knows he’s Peter Pan.”
During a short break from the hustle and bustle, Lister tells me she didn’t really know what she signed up for when she landed the lead role — and it’s been a pretty wild ride since.
“I didn’t know I had the lead,” said Lister. “So when I was reading through I noticed I had a lot of lines… We’re all pretty nervous, but we’ve been practicing really hard. So, I think we’ll have all the little details ironed out and we’ll be ready to go by Thursday.”
Elsa Wintersteen, director of the play and the high school’s drama teacher, cuts into the chatter. She leads the students through some warm ups to wind them down before they start one of their final dress rehearsals.
Wintersteen chose a particularly ambitious project for her students this year — a play that is two acts and about two hours long. It also requires them to sing and put on their best British accents.
Wintersteen, who is also a language arts teacher, said she chose “Peter and the Starcatcher” because she believes her students would be able to connect with the story, in which the two leads are on the cusp of leaving childhood behind.
“They’re both 13, and they’re both looking at: ‘What’s it going to take to leave behind the things of childhood?‘” said Wintersteen. “Whether that’s… where they play, or the joy, or the relationships there, and move on to the responsibilities of what it means to grow up.”
Wintersteen said this is the longest play Petersburg drama students have put on in at least several years. But she said her cast is up to the challenge.
“The burden of work that that requires — just, the amount of practice, the amount of lines — it’s no small feat what they’ve done,” said Wintersteen.
Faith, trust, and a bit of pixie dust aren’t the only ingredients the cast and crew have poured into the production. The young thespians say that buckets of (fake) tears and (real) sweat were central to their creative process.
But Wintersteen doesn’t want her cast to smell like pirates, even if they’re playing them. She reminded her students to come prepared while she gave them their show notes.
“Something that will be important in these costumes is deodorant because theater lights are hot,” Wintersteen said to her students. “We are going to sweat so badly and we are going to smell so bad in all this. So, deodorant and regular showering in between shows is a good thing!“
“…But it would be accurate!” a student interjected, laughing.
“It would be accurate, but the audience doesn’t want to smell it!” Wintersteen replied, as the class erupted with laughter.
So, method acting isn’t part of Wintersteen’s vision — especially when it comes to the play’s darker themes. Flyers for the play posted around town include a content warning for “cruelty towards orphans.”
Student actor Chris Calhoun, who plays one of those orphans, said the audience can expect some intense moments.
“There’s a lot of talk about abuse of orphans, and not having parents…” said Calhoun. “Just, like, being an orphan being sold into slavery, then finding out you’re actually going to be fed to snakes! But it really helps the story develop and makes it more in-depth.”
Lead actor Waylon Jones, who plays the orphaned Peter, said it was rewarding to engage with those challenging elements.
“I think it’s a really funny play,” said Jones. “It definitely has some more mature themes in it that you don’t usually get out of these types of plays.”
But stage manager and actor Heidi Brantuas said that audiences will also be treated to decidedly less mature themes to temper the sad moments.
“In true — as I like to say — Shakespearean fashion, there’s also that little brief moment of comedy to balance out the severity of the situation,” said Brantuas. “So, there’s like this really dark part of the scene; and then in the next one, people are making fart jokes.”
Brantuas said those moments of levity — and gastrointestinal agony — are what make the play special. And even throughout the cast’s hundreds of hours of practice, those moments have never gotten old — just like Pan, himself.
Petersburg High School’s production of “Peter and the Starcatcher” premiers on Thursday, February 29th, at 6:30 p.m. There’s also a show on Saturday, March 2nd, starting at 6:30 p.m., and a matinee on Sunday, March 3rd, at 3 p.m. General admission is $10, and tickets are available at Lee’s Clothing.
