Theater’s Blue Company will compete in UIL March 26 with its One-Act Play “Peter and the Starcatcher.”
The first stage of the competition is at the district level at Flower Mound High School. In the competition, schools are instructed to perform an 18-40 minute play from an approved list.
“UIL puts limits on something that should be limitless,” junior Elyse Brown said. “There’s this rulebook that’s like 120 pages — ‘you can’t do this, you can’t do that.’ How do you create a story with limits, with these barriers, with things in front of you? It’s very challenging, but it makes you think in a different way.”
“Peter and the Starcatcher” is an adaptation of a 2004 novel by Dave Perry that serves as a prequel to J.M. Barrie’s “Peter and Wendy.” The show also gives backstory to characters from the 1953 film “Peter Pan.” In the play, Peter and the lost boys are put on a ship called the Never Land, and fight to protect magical “starstuff” from an evil pirate named Black Stache.
“What’s really nice about full length things is that you can use dialogue to get a story across, but dialogue takes time,” Brown said. “We have to take that out and replace it with action, movement [and] facial expressions. To tell a story and to give that background, it has to be shown in every movement — in every scoff, every noise [and] every step forward.”
In its entirety, the show is a full length musical spanning around two hours. The cast and director Chelsea Thornburg began their production process by looking through the script to see which parts they could cut.
“We only have 45 minutes to do the whole show, but then we have to check [if we are] missing information,” senior Christian Soriano said. “Trying to find the most crucial points on the show was really important for us, and also trying to find a balance of entertainment. You don’t want to take [out] all of the fun stuff because then it’s not a fun show.”
During rehearsals, Thornburg focused on teaching the Laban movement analysis, which focuses on movement via the body, effort, shape and space of movements.
“Theater is something that if you’re not doing, you can’t practice it,” Thornburg said. “There are lines in here that we have to say at the same time, so if you miss rehearsal when we work that line, then your timing and rhythm is going to be off, and our enunciation is off. That’s been a huge challenge of how you rehearse something when you are missing people.”
Thornburg says her favorite part of the show is allowing it to invite both younger and older audiences to feel the magic of the play.
“The way that ’Peter and the starcatcher’ is told is so simple,” Thornburg said. “You can do fun things and stage magic simply. It’s very bare bones, all while bringing to life and recognizing [that] this is how Peter Pan came to be. When you walk away from the show, that magic is still capable. You’re still capable of feeling the ability that Peter feels at the end to fly — that feeling of freedom and opportunity.”
