Peter And The Starcatcher Play Analysis

The name of the play is Peter and the Starcatcher, and the author of this play is Rick Elice, this play is based on a novel by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson. This play was sponsored at The Topeka High School and attended on Thursday September 21st, 2017. The director of this play is Derek Jensen, one of the drama teachers at Topeka High and the technical director is Amanda Porter, she is Topeka High’s stagecraft teacher. The story begins with two crates and two ships, a young starcatcher along with her nanny goes on one ship, the girl befriends three orphans there, while on the other ship her father, another starcatcher finds himself stuck with pirates. The crates got swapped and the pirates became angry of this so they hunt down the other ship, when they catch up a fight begins and the girl and the three orphans must escape along with the chest, the unnamed boy took care of the crate and the others got separated into a jungle, the boy hid the chest to search for the others. In the woods, they in the end are reunited with each other, but get caught by a tribe living on the island they crashed on, they get captured but eventually escapes. The tribe chases after them, they then bump into the pirates the captain takes the chest but he didn’t know what happened to the crate during the crash, it was all gone. The tribe catches up, and it happened that the leader knew the nanny, the tribe decides to let them go. The starcatchers must leave to go home, they have to leave behind the others. In the end Peter ends up forgetting some of his adventure but he has some of the starstuff within him, he has the ability to fly, he never see’s the girl again.

Throughout Peter and the Starcatcher a variety of technical elements are employed to enhance the meaning and understanding of the play. For example, music appeared throughout the play in many forms. It took the shape of sound effects and full-on musical numbers, similar to that of a musical. Sound effects were very important to the play as it directed the audience’s attention to what was occurring on stage. This was especially helpful for the audience throughout the scene in which Molly is exploring the ship, in search for the pigs. Throughout this scene, actors were used as the walls and doors separating Molly from different rooms of the ship. Lighting and sound effects were used to represent Molly opening the door to new rooms. As she pushed

“Peter and the Starcatcher”, written by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson, is a prequel to the Broadway hit, “Peter and Wendy.” This comedic play reveals to the audience the origins of Peter Pan. This story tells how Peter Pan went from being an orphan in England without a name, to Peter Pan, the flying boy on the island of Never Land. The design of this allows the audience to reach their imaginative capacity while watching while highlighting and emphasizing key plot points throughout the story. The two design areas I will be describing and evaluating is the lighting and the scenic design. However, this play exemplifies all four aspects of design flawlessly; the lighting, sound, scenic and costume designs are said to be more sensible to the design than any other Broadway show. This is an extraordinary and excellent play because of the amazing design, the lighting designer and scenic designer used many ways to produce a variety of effects on the audience.

The performers played well together as an ensemble. Each actor was worth noting, but standout would have to go to Nicholas Vitela. To see him switch voices so quickly and move that puppet so quickly was so amazing. The costumes are unique to each character and everything complemented each other.  It was easy to see and hear what is going on, the lighting enhanced the show in its own way. Spotlights played their own distinct parts in the show. The colors on the stage were luminous and pleasant they really helped set the scene and added to the atmosphere. The entrances and exits were smooth along with the scene changes, they changed out scenes quietly and swiftly. There were many stage props that were very effective. Props and how the characters used space made it easy to recognize the character's emotions and see which character had what status.

Along with the subject of singing i felt as if the singing parts could have been more captivating as i noticed as a viewer that the audience mostly switched off when the actors began singing, the singing was captivating at first though. One more negative i noticed within this performance was the lack of explanation of characters, despite the fact that the title does show it is a religious performance i felt as if with more explanation of who is who and use of costumes this could have been easily explained to the audience. As for positive points apart from the whole performance i found the amount of people that were involved in the performance to be amazing as when watching other performances you would normally see a maximum of 10 characters

The show all started from open performances from Post Malone and Moxy Raia. When buying the tickets I didn’t know who these artists were so I had to look them up. Post Malone is a rapper and guitarist, so I thought he should be good. Therefore, when I got into the arena I was excited to listen to him, but it was awful. He was so loud and he didn’t really sing. I would never want to go back and listen to him again. This got my expectations down for the concert. I definitely

Sounds like the fireworks going off in the basement helped the audience get immersed into the show. The lights were usually had the whole stage illuminated and was kind of boring, but the way that they brought the lights on when a character would flip to turn the lights would add realism to the show. Props were used throughout the show and were well placed. In fact, I saw a radio that looked exactly the one that was in the show Annie performed by the Palm Springs High School Theatre which makes sense since they both take place during the same time period. The set looked very realistic and included nothing that was created in modern times like iphones or printers. Costumes were chosen very well in my opinion with my favorites being the police ones. Also, none of the clothing looked very modern. After taking a deeper look into the things that occurred to improve the show and how the actors looked, I think that the Palm Canyon Theatre improved the show and made the audience feel more

The set itself was simple and to the point. It was held at the Musco Technology Center also known as the MTC. The room was for a more intimate audience you could see by looking around that people were having a good time. For the most part it looked like it mostly brought out an older crowd as do most production in this town. I don’t understand why more people from my generation don’t go out and experience these type of things. However, I liked that it had high ceilings and the room seemed pretty filled. I personally think that the lights should have been dimed, it would have added to the mood of the whole

Other than some blocking that I would do a little differently to improve sound, I thought the movement throughout the show was good. Sometimes a little stiff, but it always felt authentic. I think the show entertained the audience and presented them with some different things to think about in regards to relationships and trickery and why we do the things we do. It was fun to hear the crowd react when Gerry came out of the bathroom as a woman, the cop was revealed, and Dozer admitting he was a gentle soul who like cats. I think the direction highlighted the show and gave the audience the opportunity to follow along through this “shady”

When it comes it show design I would say it was lack luster. Scene transitions took longer than expected and there seem to be some missed sound and video queues. Costume wise I would say was on point but didn't really add anything but a few chuckles.

The acting for the production as a whole was very believable, because the actors seemed

All of these plays tend to have a focus on the younger generations dealing with the pressures that adults place on them or shifting to adulthood places on them. For example, Spelling Bee focuses on the lives of elementary school children dealing with the pressures that their parents put on them. Peter and the Starcatcher is a show about children having to save the world from the mistakes that the adults make during the play. They also have to deal with the consequences from the adults’ actions, like getting shipwrecked on an unfriendly island because the ship sailed into a storm, or being placed on a ship in slavery because a greedy adult just wanted money. Baltimore shows the transitional period from being a minor to becoming an adult yourself.

I thought that the costume decisions for this production were rather interesting. I have seen posters for Cats where the cast is in all fur suits and I have also seen ones where they are only in black with fur patches. For the show the costume designer chose to put each actor into a full on cat suit with a leotard underneath, I thought that it was an excellent choice because it made them look more realistic. Granted, the other costume design would have probably been cooler but they still had to dance under hot stage lights either

On the 19th March 2015, my Drama class and I went to the Mayflower theatre in Southampton to see “To Kill a Mockingbird” performed by Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre. It was a very naturalistic production set in southern Alabama in the early 1930s, during the American great depression. It was performed in an auditorium with raked seating and raked and end on staging.

The costumes were convincing, the make up, the set designs, and the backdrops, were extremely impressive.