‘For Peter Pan on her 70th Birthday’ comes to Carbondale’s Thunder River Theatre Company

For Wendy Perkins, Kristin Carlson and Renee Prince, pulling together the Thunder River Theatre Company’s (TRTC) upcoming production of “For Peter Pan on her 70th Birthday” hasn’t been easy. But it has been a challenge well-worth tackling. 

“This play requires every inch and cell and every part of our brain and heart space,” Prince, the play’s director, told the Post Independent. “It really requires all of us to show up fully every day and I really love that about it.”

The magical, heart-tugging drama explores familial love and what it means to age. Featuring a character named Ann — who played Peter Pan as a child — and her four siblings, the play follows the family as they grapple with the death of their father, explore childhood memories and return to Neverland, the only place where it’s possible to never grow up. 

Playwright Sarah Ruhl wrote the piece for her mother, who played Peter Pan as a child, for her 70th birthday. Some of the dialogue is even taken from interviews Ruhl did with her extended family, according to the script notes. 

“I love projects where it feels like we really have to wrestle with them, that require us to dig really deep, and this play certainly does that,” Prince said. “While we’re in the fantasy world of Peter Pan and playing pretend and Neverland and jumping off beds and pretending to fly, we’re also wrestling with some of life’s biggest questions about our own aging, growing up, and mortality and how we live in the face of death and all those big questions.”

Written in the form of a Japanese Noh Play, the piece is presented in three movements. 

“In a Japanese Noh drama, there is a three-part structure: the protagonist meets the ghost, then recognizes the ghost, then dances with or embraces the ghost,” Ruhl wrote in the script. “One might imagine this structure as a contemporary Midwestern Noh drama.”

TRTC Artistic Director Missy Moore saw the play as an opportunity to feature several actors who helped make the company what it is today. Carlson, who plays Wendy, was part of its inaugural production in 2001, and the theatre also produced one of the first plays she wrote, “Eudora’s Box.” Perkins, who plays Ann, has worked with the theatre for more than two decades. 

“I really wanted to try and find a play that could highlight and be a vehicle for many of the actors that have really helped build TRTC,” Moore said. “(Carlson and Perkins) have such long, rich, histories with this company and we highlighted the guys (in previous performances), let’s bring the rest of the amazing talent that lives in this community to the stage.” 

Moore also wanted to find a play that Prince, the production’s director, could lead. 

“I’m a relative newbie,” Prince said. “I started working with Thunder River when Missy took the helm, so my first project was ‘Circle Mirror Transformation,’ which was an Annie Baker play. Since then, it’s really become my artistic home in a lot of ways. I’m really grateful for TRTC.”

Both Carlson and Perkins have found aspects of the play that resonate with them personally. 

For Perkins, it’s the desire to not grow up.

“I like to get deep, but I also like to play, and the theme of not growing up is not a big stretch for me,” Perkins told the Post Independent. “When I think about it, have I grown up? In some ways, yes, but in some ways, I have not, and I really cherish that playfulness and that joy along with being serious and being real and being deep in relationships, sorrow and fear…”

Carlson says her character, Wendy, resonates with her personal roots. She hails from the midwest and is the youngest of four siblings.

“I very much understand being the youngest and wanting so desperately to keep up with your older siblings,” Carlson said. “(I find myself) in a place at my age now where my siblings are older enough that they’re facing some real health problems. I’ve lost one brother and recognize that these beautiful people who have been in my life from day one and who have shaped everything about me are not eternal.”

Each cast member is excited to fully embody their characters in front of an audience beginning Friday.

‘”I think making art is an act of hope and hopefulness,” Carlson later added. “I always think of my mom, and her favorite thing to tell me when I was distressed was ‘love wins — whatever’s happening right now, love wins.’ I think this play holds that very deeply.”

Original reporting from postindependent.com