Being able to fly may seem an impossible aspiration to many, but so might the goal of writing and performing a play, a work crafted with advice from one of Broadway’s hottest directors.
However, as J. M. Barrie assured us in his world-famous tale of Peter Pan, “Dreams do come true, if only we wish hard enough.”
Tomorrow evening at the Strand Theatre, middle-schoolers from Dorchester, Mattapan and the rest of the city will make their stage dreams come true in a performance showcase that will culminate a five-week theater and writing program. The classes were co-led by tutors from 826 Boston, a non-profit youth writing center, and theater professionals from American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.). The resulting short plays were inspired by Barrie’s beloved fable of the little boy who never grew up and his own creative struggles as a playwright.
Staffers from the Egleston Square-based 826 Boston and from Cambridge’s A.R.T. have teamed up for the second year to host a page-to-stage summer theater camp for 24 middle school students. Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots, generously donated $100,000 to fully underwrite two years of summer theater camp, a gift made in honor of his late wife Myra Kraft, a former A.R.T. board member.
Among the lucky beneficiaries of Mr. Kraft’s largesse are Dorchester residents Aaliyah Robinson, Basil Kiranga, Cassidy Nguyen, Elaine Truong, Elijah Atkinson, Zanaida Sepulueda, Elijah Warren-Christophe, and Ayia Elsadiq.
During the camp, students visited the Loeb Drama Center to watch a rehearsal of Finding Neverland, a Broadway-bound musical based on the 2004 Johnny Depp movie about playwright J. M. Barrie and the children of the Llewelyn Davies family who inspired him to create Peter, the Darlings, and the ticking crocodile. The students received feedback on their early script drafts from A.R.T. Artistic Director Diane Paulus, who is directing Finding Neverland and who helmed such recent Broadway smashes as the revivals of Hair, Pippin and The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess.
Rubbing shoulders with so much writing and staging talent stimulated the 10 to 14 years-olds working in teams of five to create short plays with utopian and dystopian themes, sparked by their Neverland experiences.
Georgia Young, the A.R.T.’s education and community programs assistant who co-taught the camp with Karen Sama and Christine Meade, remarked: “To see them so invested in their ideas, but also learning how to compromise, learning how to combine ideas, or let things go, or build on other people’s ideas is really exciting.”
This is 826 Boston’s seventh annual summer camp, and its second in partnership with the A.R.T. The innovative, project-based program targets underserved youth and focuses on strengthening literacy skills during a time of year where many urban youth experience the “summer slide.”
The one-night-only show at the Strand on Friday, August 15 is at 7 p.m. A.R.T.’s Finding Neverland continues its run at the Loeb Drama Center through September 28 before heading to New York and the West End. It’s shaping up to be A.R.T.’s biggest export to the Great White Way ever.
