Plays: Peter Pan

Peter Pan is also a fantasy, so consider how seeing it might affect or benefit a child of a particular age.
How would you present this play in your classroom or share it with your children? What objectives and activities would you associate with the play?

Children soak in everything. With plays, they see another world played out in front of them. I’m a firm believer that plays should be seen and not read. I was fortunate enough that my grandmother agreed with me so I went to see Cats and Annie with her when I was growing up, along with Evita, Taming of the Shrew (in the round! It was amazing!) and plenty others thanks to school programs. I feel Peter Pan is appealing to a good range of kids, and young ones would love to see it performed. With a library setting, I’d have not a fully cast performance, but maybe a shadow puppet or regular puppet show performed for the kids. Kids should always be encouraged to participate and have fun, so were I working in a school program I would gladly help them put on Peter Pan with child actors. I feel that middle school is getting too old or this, but elementary seems good to me. I always loved Peter Pan for being interactive and younger is better here because I feel that children can suspend their belief more easily as they are younger. Whether you believe in fairies or not, it’s difficult to not want to clap for Tink to live when the play is done well. It’s infectious!
The play itself is fun and good. Wendy, John, and Michael and mostly just playing pretend throughout. They learn that though you should remain a child as long as you’re permitted, there is a time to grow up and take up responsibilities. Wendy especially, and young girls through her, finds that the role of mother while fun can be trying and that she really isn’t a mother yet, but she certainly is aging. Peter on the other hand doesn’t learn and he never will. He isn’t unhappy, but he is alone in the end. I'm sad for Peter in the end because other versions he does go back and one I swear he fell in love with Wendy's granddaughter or daughter or something. I found that very sweet.

Like a few (too few:-() others, you has the experience with live theatre that most kids have--it's much more interactive than movies.
Cute idea for the library.
Not sure middle (or even high school) is too old for this--my nephew (in the picture) was in late middle school when he played Peter, and the audience ranged in age from 2 to 70--and all loved it, nit to mention clapping for Tink:-).
Good on the themes.
I recall the version you mention--might it have been the Mary Martin?

It is really hard to beat theatre first hand. Something my wife and I are trying to do is expose our children to such. We know it will only benefit them and help give them an appreciation for something other than movies and tv.
Shadow puppets. Now that is an intersting concept and I do believe the children would love it.

Endgame

As for the prompts on this, simply make notes on your evolving reaction to the play as you read it, and then post these and your overall reaction.
I read Godot in high school, and I can certainly feel this is the same writer. The play starts strangely, with Clov checking out what’s outside the windows and in the trash cans. Knowing Hamm’s parents are in them, I sort of understand the humor in looking in, but I’m hoping to understand that better when they come in to play. The interaction between Clov and Hamm is fun, you can tell Clov is used to this treatment, but he still doesn’t care for it. Hamm seems to not know the proper state of things. He forgets that the world is changed at times, but other times he recalls clearly. Nell and Nagg are oddly endearing. They still feel for each other, trying, but failing to kiss as they do. They’ve also forgotten much and are assumedly in worse shape than their son and his servant considering they’re physically in trash cans. The trousers story was funny in a very dry sort of way.
When Clov examines the outside with a telescope, we learn that they are near the sea, but that there is nothing there really. No waves, no sun, all grey. It’s bleak, but makes good sense for this. It’s some sort of end of times where everything isn’t leaving in vibrant explosions, but just ceasing and rotting away. When Clov finds a flea, Hamm says “But humanity might start from there all over again!” and then he insists it killed. This makes no sense. But then, Hamm must not want humanity to renew, he must want it to complete and end as it is doing.
We come to find that Clov has served Hamm since he was small. Yet he will still leave if he had the combination to the cupboard. Hamm tells him to kill him that he’ll give him the combination, but Clov won’t kill him though he still insists he’ll leave. Which then leads to the confusing question of how would Hamm know that Clov had left instead of simply dying.
Hamm’s story feels disjointed, but that’s because of him more than the story itself I feel. He gets distracted mostly by criticizing how he puts things “Nicely put that” “A bit feeble, that.” His story is about a man asking him for bread and then corn for his boy. Hamm denies him this and goes on about how things won’t improve. Use your head, can’t you, use your head, you’re on earth, there’s no cure for that!” “But what in God’s name do you imagine? That the earth will awake in spring?” Instead he offers to take the man in as a servant, but the man asks if he will take on his son as well. Perhaps the boy was Clov?
This entire time Hamm is terribly rude to his parents. He tells them to quiet down, promises his father a sugar plum when there is none. His father understands that it’s like a role reversal for them, but he also feels that things will reverse once more. Considering Hamm is stuck in the chair, I feel this is very possible. When he picked up talking again in another monologue after Nell turns out dead, he suggests that maybe he’d crawl along the floor on his stomach to escape and plead for help, mirroring the image of the man that had gone to him before. He even says he will call for his father and son, though what son? Maybe Clov, considering he had earlier said he’d been like a father to him.
In the end, Clov did leave after spotting another person outside. Hamm was left alone, when he called to his father the man did not appear, so he was quite possibly dead as well.
This is a strange but interesting play. It’s sort of different from Waiting For Godot in that that one was about waiting for the action, a great deal of action has happened already. We are also waiting for someone to get up the nerve to leave. I’d love to see this performed or be involved in a production of it. There so much going on without anything really going on at all. The relationship between Hamm and his father is strained dreadfully, even in this decomposing state, Nell and Nagg still love each other and wish to be with one another, especially Nagg because we can see that Nell is getting towards her end and is the least lucid of the lot. Then the relationship between Clov and Hamm is strange. Clov threatens to leave constantly and Hamm doesn’t always believe him, or so he says. They are not just servant and master, but like father and son and vice versa. While Hamm took Clov in, Clov is the one that takes care of Hamm.

Good reading of the play, especially on the post-apocalyptic--though long after the apocalypse--setting, the relations between the characters, their various states, Hamm's (non)sense, and the hints at the backstory.
Good on the humor in it, too--Becket was a Vaudeville fan.
Having gotten all of this, as I asked Ash & Erica, what, if anything, does this play say about the human condition and human relationships in general?
Your comment about seeing the play in performance: couldn't you see the video?