PETER PAN (2001)
I had waited for the opportunity to direct a production of “Peter Pan” for nearly 40 years and at last I got my chance! The successes of the last few productions gave us the finances we needed to take on this expensive production...it was, at that time the most expensive show we had undertaken but the results were well worth the investment and the challenges we were able to overcome to cope with the show’s technical demands. The set design and construction was the first such challenge ....countless hours of planning and preparation were done before our amazing set builders and painters were able to “put it on the stage”. There was so much scenery that we spent more than one night with set piece models and giant stage diagrams working out the logistics of being able to do all of it in the Abbey Arts Centre (during the show, there was literally scenery everywhere backstage). We really put the AAC to full use. Then, of course, there was the flying. ZFX (Las Vegas) installed the mechanisms and trained our cast and “fly crew” - it was a most interesting four days of training!
Colourful costumes, ingenious Props, and a well-designed lighting plot helped the hard-working cast to come up with an incredible performance. Was it all worth it ???? Public response to the show was overwhelmingly positive....we sold 98% of all available seats for the six performances...that translates to just over 4100 people in attendance. 5 of the 6 shows were completely sold out. That made “Peter Pan” second behind the production of “Grease!” a few years before.
Some comments from the “mailbag”: “The show was great. I couldn’t believe the flying stuff. When Peter flew into the room the first time...it really took your breath away” (written by a professional actor). “It was wonderful”.”The quality of the performance and the entertainment value were very high in every area - music, drama, technical, costumes, program....- the list goes on”. “the quality and effort that was put into the show was amazing”. To sum it all up, I’ll use the headline from a newspaper review: “Yale captures magic in Peter Pan”.
A few anecdotes: the ZFX technician was delayed at Vancouver Airport immigration services for his response to a question about what he does...he answered: “I teach kids how to fly”. It was made worse by another response to a question about what was in his travel bag...he answered: “fairy dust” (he was actually bringing in the mylar pieces used to create the illusion of fairy dust used by Peter Pan). If you look at the series of pictures in the Peter Pan “Memory Lane” (Photos) section of the website, you will see a picture of a fire truck....in one rehearsal, the stage fog accumulated in the backstage area hallway setting off the fire/smoke alarms...this led to an emergency vehicle response and an evacuation of the theatre! The electric driven pirate ship ran amok on stage when its driver (who shall remain nameless) couldn’t park it in the correct location - it took several minutes of “forward”/“reverse”/“forward” etc along with appropriate pirate grunts (aarrr! aaarrr!) for the ship to dock in the correct place....that brought the proverbial gales of laughter and brought the rehearsal to a standstill while we all recovered.
Theatre is such great fun!!!!!!!
see also: Memory Lane (Photos) - Peter Pan
