Upon entering the Ethel M. Barber Theater, “Peter Pan” viewers know they are going to be active participants in the production.
The ushers do not show audience members to their seats. Instead, they point to a dark staircase. Yellow chalk arrows say, “this way,” and crew members dressed in black smile and point. The audience passes through a hallway lined with clocks, emerging onto the stage. There, they are greeted by the cast, all in character.
“Take a seat,” says a beaming actor, who is busy tossing a ragdoll into the air.
Amanda Dehnert directs the mainstage play, which opened Friday and closes Feb. 22.
“Imagination is a muscle we all need to exercise,” the Communication professor said.
The set – composed of ropes, mattresses, scaffolding and plastic tarp – sits in the middle of a foggy haze beneath the audience members who surround it on three sides. Dehnert said the abstract scenery creates a framework, allowing the viewers to fill in the blanks on their own.
Actors play a group of children who portray J.M. Barrie’s classic in a game of imagination. Swaying from side to side, they speak in childish, elongated tones, creating the play as they go along and aided by a tattered copy of the 1904 script.
NU’s production uses an adaptation by Trevor Nunn and John Caird, which incorporates parts of Barrie’s later novel “Peter and Wendy,” Dehnert said. She said the play also includes the cast’s and her own interpretations. At one point, Peter Pan says Tinkerbell “knows she’s a slut, and as such, she glories in it,” while mediating a fight between the fairy and Wendy.
Though adult elements lurk on the play’s periphery, a large portion of the Sunday matinee audience was children.
“I like when they are on the ropes spinning around,” said Connor Falls, 7, who saw the play with his mother and sister. “I like it being different.”
The actors create the play’s special effects largely on their own, according to the play’s movement director, Matt Hawkin. In plain sight, they suspend each other on ropes, making their fellow actors “fly.”
“The ensemble has to be in control of the show,” said Hawkins, who teaches stage combat at Loyola University.
For this reason, Hawkins said the actors have code words they can say on stage to ensure safety. The term “game on” means all is well to go forward with a scene or a stunt, while “bail” means something is wrong.
Communication junior Alex Weisman plays Michael in the production. He said the process of creating the play’s youngest character and dealing with the its unique challenges was “like taking an incredible acting class for four weeks and learning to be in front of an audience for the fifth week.”
He said that for him, the play was special because the audience has to be creative along with the actors.
“It’s about looking back and realizing the difference between magic and imagination,” Weisman said.
Audience member Kara Weisenstein said the show created, “a totally different theater experience.”
“You feel as much a part of the show as the actors are,” the Communication sophomore said. “It doesn’t let you be a lazy audience member.”
Weisenstein said she just finished performing in “Seussical,” and said she saw parallels between the two shows, in that both demand imagination. She said a play about growing up had special resonance on a college campus.
“Shows like ‘Peter Pan’ and ‘Seussical’ make you stop and just think about how you view life,” she said. “So many of us are focused on our career tracks and our goals that we forget what we really value.”
