Peter and the Starcatcher

A personal note to the LA Mission company from Peter and the Starcatcher playwright and Tony Award-winner Rick Elice:

​Dear Starcatchers!

    Greetings from New York. Your co-director, Mr. Jon Walker—as brilliant an actor as you’ll ever find, btw—has told me how great you all are, and how freakin’ awesome your show is. So I thought I’d say hi, and that it’s a privilege to hear that a bunch of super-talented people at Mission College are having a blast with our little play. I say “our” because Peter has always felt like a family project, and where I come, family is everything. 

    I remember the time that Sheldon Harnick, the wonderful lyricist of Fiddler on the Roof, came to see Peter when it was on Broadway. We went out for a meal after the performance, and this is a little of what we talked about: Fiddler was one of the first shows I saw as a kid—and I finally got to tell him what I loved most about it. Mr. Harnick, very modestly, said it was Jerome Robbins’ idea. Mr. Robbins wanted to portray the strength of the community in a powerful, visual way, so the very first time the people of Anatevka appear, they form a circle. Then, at the end of the show, when they’re thrown out of Anatevka, they meet one more time in a circle, and then, one by one, they leave, and the circle is broken. And we know it’s the end of something.

    I share this with you, because we did the opposite with this play. We begin with a mob of actors center-stage, a community waiting to happen, and we end with those same people back at center-stage with a purpose—to lift Peter up in his heart, so he can fly. And we know it’s the beginning of something. Never the end.

    And it’s that collective strength and community purpose–your community on stage in Sylmar–that will be so moving for the folks that come to the see the play.

    You heroic clutch of actors! You’re the beating heart and bleeding feet and sprained muscles and ragged throats and extraordinary talents at the center of our circle. And the truth of Peter, and of all theater, is that this play wouldn’t be here, the ideas inside it wouldn’t be here, the love of theater coursing through it wouldn’t be here, and I wouldn’t be here, if it weren’t for all of you.

    And so, I hereby bestow upon you – the entire cast and crew, every flora and fauna, every orphan and pirate, every Mollusk and mermaid – the MIRRORED PINEAPPLE AWARD, for utter brilliance, for simple truth, for meritorious silliness, and for sheer, irresistible humanity.

Lots of love to all of you, and THANKS!

PS: Listen to Jon Walker. He knows what he’s doing; he was there to begin with.

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