As people fill in their seats, cracking open pop cans and rustling with their snacks, the curtain hangs silently, shielding the student-built set and the cast waiting in the wings to bring it to life. Finally, the lights begin to dim, and the show can begin.
This year, for the fall play, the Revere Players put on Camp Neverland: a Peter Pan Story (Camp Neverland), a production inspired by J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, but with a twist.
When deciding what the fall play would be, Sarah Pine, the Revere Players director, chose to take a different approach than in years past. Instead of taking a script, memorizing the lines and adding a twist as in the past, she coached the students through building their own lines.
“When we first kind of talked about doing Peter Pan, when I was talking to my assistant director about it, we knew we wanted to do something kind of different with it. . . . We would improvise all these scenes, and I would just take notes on what happened. . . . We kind of put it together and read through that script once we had all the scenes kind of written out, and then I went through and kind of polished, refined [and] tweaked a little bit so that it was cohesive,” Pine said.
The play is based on the traditional themes of Peter Pan, but if someone expected a classic rendition, they would be surprised. Instead of being set in Neverland, the plot follows a group of campers who have different perspectives on growing up. Some are ready to leave fairytales behind, but others want to hold onto childhood forever. In an attempt to hold onto their childhood, the campers decide to put on a play of Peter Pan. The result was an exploration of the fears of growing up and the new pressures of life as one gets older. These themes are very common in a high school setting where students are in between independent and dependent stages of life.
“Some of [the camp counselors] are like, ‘You know what, this is childish, and I’m ready to be an adult’ versus those of them that are not quite ready to take on the adult responsibility. They want to stay and play and be a kid forever, like Peter Pan. . . . It’s kind of a question of when are you going to be ready to make that choice [to grow up], and what are the benefits of growing up versus staying a kid,” Pine said.
The simple set of a campground allowed for the cast to put most of their effort into creating the script. The setting required minimal set design needs, and the nature of the show did not call for many elaborate costume changes. According to Pine, the new approach towards the classic production gave students a unique opportunity to be a part of the show, not just represent it.
“As much as I was there to be a guiding hand, this is truly like a homegrown creation, and I think it’s a really special project in that way. I don’t think a lot of schools are having their kids write their fall plays. . . . It was a really cool opportunity to see those kids stretch some different creative muscles,” Pine said.
Taking on such a production for the first time, it was clear that students would need some support to keep everything on track and cohesive. Melinda Tucker, one of the student directors, kept rehearsal moving by reading lines when a cast member couldn’t be there and making sure people met their cues.
“I feel like at first, everyone had a different idea of what they wanted to do with the script, but we were able to make sure everyone got heard and incorporate[d] all of the ideas in there,” Tucker said.
Nicky Ghiorghie is a senior and has participated in Revere Players for all four years of his high school career. In this production, he played Robert, a camper who is ready to leave Neverland behind, and Captain Hook.
“Rob is kind of based [on] me. He’s ready to leave, basically. He wants to go to college. He’s kind of done with high school. He’s ready to just go move on and I kind of relate to that. I’m ready for college. I’m ready to move on,” Ghiorghie said.
Before actually planning out their script, the actors needed to learn how to improvise and create stories out of thin air. Miah Palmer, also a senior and the President of Revere Players, described the process the students went through to learn improvisation skills and come up with their own ideas.
“Our directors give us scenarios, . . . and we would separate into groups, and we would just go and write a script for that scenario. . . . [Then] we would share it with them, perform it and then they would take that and kind of form it and shape it into the current script that we have now. So it’s more like [an] ‘I’ll give you this work on it, and then perform it so that we can see what it looks like’,” Palmer said.
With a regular script, students do have some room to create a character and add their own emotion to the words; writing the play themselves allowed them to craft a unique persona. Ghiorghie said that this was a big change from his past four years with the program.
“I think the whole idea of creating the story ourselves is pretty challenging. I’m someone who likes just to be given a script, and I learn my lines . . . so this definitely brought me out of my comfort zone to like having to be creative and come up with new, different ideas,” he said.
Ghiorghie connected with some but not all of the themes in the play. Like many high schoolers taking the college path, he is not sure what the experience will look like, but he is not afraid to embrace the change. Instead of being a mirror into his own fears or excitement, the play gave Ghiorghie a different viewpoint.
“It gave me a different perspective of how other people feel about growing up and their other fears. Because that’s something that we did at the beginning, we talked about our fears of growing up and like what we’re all scared about as a group and that was like eye-opening. I saw different ideas [and] perspectives,” Ghiorghie said.
There were four showings of the play November 20th through the 23rd. On Wednesday, the 19th, there was an open dress rehearsal during school hours for senior citizens. Reflecting on her last play at RHS, Palmer noted that her favorite part was the collaborative effort of the crew, from the students working the lights, the actors on stage, to others creating the set design.
Palmer said it was very rewarding “seeing how our ideas [came] to life . . . how all of our ideas that we put on paper are being very well-executed, seeing how it looks on stage, seeing how the lines we wrote down [and] how they sound and everything.”
This year’s production of Camp Neverland allowed students to be involved in the creation of the script, giving them a more involved role in the production. Actors had the opportunity to gain new skills and were able to show those skills on stage. The Revere Players will be back on stage in the spring to perform Legally Blonde, The Musical.
