PETER AND THE STARCATCHER Begins Tonight at PCPA

Before Wendy... before he was Captain Hook... before a boy was given the name Peter Pan...and before there was a Neverland, there was a Starcatcher Apprentice named Molly, a pirate named Black Stache, and a nameless orphan...and they are about to be thrown together in a perilous (and wildly hilarious) adventure on the high seas. But, of course none of this actually exists, unless you are prepared to use your imagination.

PCPA is proud to present the highly inventive Peter and the Starcatcher - a play by Rick Elice (Jersey Boys - Addams Family) based on the 2004 novel by humorist Dave Barry and suspense writer Ridley Pearson. It plays in the Marian Theatre, Santa Maria, tonight, February 12 - March 1, 2015 and August 21 - September 13 under the stars in the Solvang Festival Theater.

It's the grownup's prequel to Peter Pan where an apprentice starcatcher - 13 year-old Molly Aster - and three orphan boys take to the high seas with a trunk full of magic starstuff while pursued by a boat-load of pirates. Along the way Molly learns what it means to grow-up while a nameless orphan and his friends take up residence on an island where dreams are born and time is never planned - the island where that nameless orphan is christened Peter Pan, the boy who never grew up.

A dozen actors play more than 100 unforgettable characters, employing inspired stagecraft and the limitless possibilities of imagination. The actors enter a sparse stage and inform us that we will encounter flying, dreaming, and adventure; and we are asked to use our imaginations to immediately transport us to a bustling port in the British Empire where our journey is about to embark. There we find Lord Aster and his daughter Molly, preparing for a secret mission for the Queen. Also on the dock are two identical trunks which are key to the plot of our story as each is about to be loaded onto the wrong ship.

Peter and the Starcatcher is directed by Brad Carroll with musical direction by Matthew R. Meckes, scenic design by Heidi Hoffer, costumes by Cathie McClellan, lighting by Jannifer 'Z' Zornow and sound by Andrew Mark Wilhelm. Jahana Azodi is the Equity Production Stage Manager. The cast includes PCPA's newest Resident Artist, Matt Koenig as Black Stache, along with Andrew Philpot* as Lord Aster, Michael Jenkinson* as Smee, Peter S. Hadres* as Captain Scott, George Walker as Slank, and Leo Cortez as Fighting Prawn, and, featuring 2nd year actors Jillian Osborne and Cody Wittlinger as Molly and Boy, respectively.

After its origination at the La Jolla Playhouse, followed by a brief Off-Broadway run, Peter and the Starcatcher opened on Broadway in 2012 and went on to win five Tony Awards. The playwright sets the time and place - via the official Peter and the Starcatcher web site - "...on an island, our Neverland. Wendy has not yet appeared. Instead, we have Molly, our hero, in a time before girls were encouraged to be heroes. We have no Captain Hook...or rather, we have no Hook yet. Instead, we have the pirate who shall become Hook, but not until we're through with him. He, whom the pitiful pirate kingdom calls Black Stache. We have our orphans, perpetually lost, though not quite yet Lost Boys. We have natives and mermaids and a perilously hungry crocodile. Even Tinker Bell reaches our island before we leave it, because she could not stay away. The nameless boy at the center of our story ironically learns what it is to be a man over the course of our play, when he's destined to stay a boy forever. The principle difference between our play and [J.M.] Barrie's is that we bring this boy and Molly to the brink of understanding what love might be, so that the thrill of an eternity of 'awfully big adventures' is tinged with the ineffable sadness of what a boy who will never never know. Only when Molly leaves him behind, bound for adulthood, does our boy truly become Peter Pan." Elice concluded, "James Barrie found his character [Peter Pan] by embracing the notion of never growing up. I found mine by realizing I had."

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