By Maria Hodermarska, LCAT, RDT/BCT
This past October, 2018, The NYU Steinhardt Program in Educational Theatre presented a production of Rick Elice’s Peter and the Starcatcher (2009) [1] (more here). It is a prequel to J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan (1904). This production was presented with a fully inclusive cast of people with a range of capabilities and identities--people who are wheelchair users, autistic people, neurotic-neurotypical people, developmentally disabled people, queer people, straight people, people of varying ethnicities and cultural backgrounds. NYU students performed with other college students from the community and other actors from other community partnerships. It was a true celebration of difference and a festival of interdependence.
The show was originally written for a company of male-identified performers, with only one role, that of Molly (who will later become the mother of Wendy), as the only female-acted role and the play’s indefatigable heroine. The NYU company was predominantly female-identified. The lost boys, the pirates, and the other characters were played primarily by women. This production offered proof that the future is not just female but fluid in its interpretation of gendered and ableist theatrical roles.
According to its Director, Amy Cordileone, "Our production is, first and foremost, about journey and self-acceptance-a direct reflection of our emerging artistic community, which is grounded in the celebration of each individual's attributes and aptitudes," (more from Cordileone here)
For example, the character of “Boy” who will during the course of the play become “Peter” was played by two actors--one a high school student who is a person living with Down’s Syndrome and the other a college student from NYU. This double casting of the role afforded the character deeper meaning. One actor spoke the lines, the other actor (who has a speech impairment) would repeat a word or two from the line. So, the language of the play might proceed in this way “Grown-ups lie. They lie and then they leave” with an immediate repetition of, “They lie” from the second actor. In this doubling process, we the audience are implicated in Peter’s pain about his hurt and abandonment; we can’t escape it. The repetition serves to remind us all of our untruths and deceptions because they are big enough to be repeated.
The character of the ship’s Cat was played by a little girl who is also living with Down’s Syndrome and who was supported by another cast member. She is flown (in a baby Bjorn baby carrier), carried on the hip, and in one scene cuddles with Molly (who is an animal lover). The ship’s Cat, therefore, becomes more than a character who might be played by a puppet. She is a person needing care and love and who, in a play that is set on a swirling ocean of greed, abandonment and interpersonal violence, is a source of tenderness, true innocence, a reminder that we must care for each other and a reminder that our Peter, all of us for that matter, live with the profound vulnerability of difference, too.
The character of Mrs. Bumbrake, Molly’s jolly caregiver, was played by actor Anthony Sun Prickett. Prickett is a student in the NYU Program in Educational Theatre. Mrs. Bumbrake was originally written as a drag character. Cordileone, notes, “this character is a vestige of another time socially and politically.” The part is different than a trouser’s role-- because the “joke” is homophobic, to poke fun at the maleness of the actor in a female role. Prickett reports, “[t]his is a play by and for white, cis, straight, ableist, people but that is not who we the cast are and that is no longer acceptable in the larger world.” Prickett objected to the “transphobic” language about Mrs. Bumbrake in the text. For example, there are references to making Bumbrake “shave her legs.” Prickett worked with Cordileone and the production’s dramaturg to remove the insulting and objectifying language. Prickett’s Mrs. Bumbrake was a saxophone playing-loyal-loving-maternal figure for Molly.
Furthermore, these changes made Mrs. Bumbrake’s love affair with the sailor Alf, a sweet, queer love affair. Their love is the only adult love of the play and beautifully disrupts the white, cis, heteronormativity to which Prickett initially objected.
Prickett, who identifies as an Asian-American, had objections not only to the homophobic and transphobic nature of his role but the exotified “natives” of the play’s second act. The natives called The Mollusks speak in “Italian food”. “Tiramisu” for example, means “goodbye.” But, a 2018 staging that did not orientalize (Said, 1982) [2] them would require Cordileone, to be creative. She brilliantly chose to have the Mollusks speak their Italian food language with high Long Island accents. They became a band of “Real Housewives” or an all-female parody of “The Jersey Shore.”
Of course, these discussions and adjustments take time and care which is what building community requires. The staging also required extensive effort as the cast swirled on and off the set like the ocean, carrying each other, carrying children, carrying set pieces back and forth. The physical achievement of the staging was something to behold as cast members of differing physical abilities were inverting assumptions about capacity and challenging how we debilitate each other through those assumptions. An electrified scooter became a ship. Two hands, held tight became a metaphor for an ethic of care that undergirded the entire enterprise.
Cordileone also engaged the services of a drama therapist, Adam Stevens, as a Special Needs Consultant for the rehearsal process. Stevens wrote,
“Prior to auditions I spoke with the production team about the performative nature of living life with disabilities. I shared/modeled diverse methods of supporting those with special needs in rehearsal and performance; doubling, modeling, repetition, shadowing, pairing. This included but was not limited to acknowledging the need to adapt in order to accommodate various abilities and diagnosis; reading, speech, mobility. We discussed the need to make accommodations in order to allow for safety and wellness, too. This included adjusted schedules, more frequent breaks, etc. During much of the rehearsal process, I was in contact with the director and stage manager offering counsel on the interpersonal relationships between the special needs cast members and the neuro-typical cast members. As a drama therapist my role was to offer insight into holding space for developmentally diverse actors to produce a generative and empowering process for all” (Stevens, personal communication, 2018).
"As a drama therapist my role was to offer insight into holding space for developmentally diverse actors to produce a generative and empowering process for all."
Cordileone’s tireless efforts paid off. What she created was more than a production but a sense of beloved community--the Reverend Dr. King’s notion of a mutually dependent world: “In the Beloved Community, …[r]acism and all forms of discrimination, bigotry and prejudice will be replaced by an all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood…[l]ove and trust will triumph over fear and hatred.”
And, it is all there ready to be discovered in the play itself, the text, which in spite of its challenges, is the place where community was found.
At the end of the play the “Boy” not only gets a first name, “Peter” but a last name, too, “Pan.” Peter is talking with his friend Molly and her father Lord Aster, about his journey from orphan to a person with a name. This mirrors the audiences journey with the cast from assumptions about difference, to a shared celebration of it. Here is their exchange:
PETER
She said I needed a family name--so she gave me one.
MOLLY
Pan. Pan, as in “all.”
PETER
All?
MOLLY
Your name, understand? The whole island. All the ants on the beach, all the birds in the air, the mermaids, the Mollusks, the pirates, and the boys, too, of course, especially the boys--they’re all your family.
(PETER brightens at that word.)
ASTER
And how does that make you feel?
PETER
Like--like I’m finally out of the dark.
MOLLY
There’s a name for that feeling, Peter.
PETER
Home.
This production of Peter and the Starcatcher was 2 months of rehearsal and a mere two weeks of performance. It was a seemingly small event in the largeness and chaos of our world. But Cordileone’s vision made this production so much more--a metaphor for the world that I aspire to.
Community is not made of brick and mortar but of the honest hard work of encounter, dialogue, frustration, communion, patience and tender loving kindness. There is a name for that feeling, Peter was right. It’s called home.
[1] Elice, R (2012) . Peter and the Star Catcher: The Acting Edition. Los Angeles, CA: Disney Editions
[2] https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1982/08/12/orientalism-an-exchange/
About the Author:
Maria Hodermarska, MA, RDT/BCT, LCAT is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Drama Therapy at New York University. She is a Licensed Creative Arts Therapist (LCAT), a Registered Drama Therapist (RDT) and Board Certified Trainer of Drama Therapy (BCT), a Credentialed Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Counselor (CASAC), and an Internationally Certified Alcohol and Drug Abuse Counselor (ICADAC). Her work spans both the creative and applied psychological uses of the theater arts, most often within NGOs, community-based mental health programs and alcohol/substance abuse treatment programs serving un-served or under-served populations.
Ms. Hodermarska is the coordinator of creative arts therapies for Project Common Bond, an international symposium for young people who have lost a family member to an act of terror, armed or inter-religious conflict. She is former Ethics Chair and current Ethics Committee member for the National Association for Drama Therapy and is a former Education Chairperson for the same organization.
