A pre-teen is forced into a mother’s role. That’s one way to read Wendy’s story in the classic J.M. Barrie tales of Peter Pan and the Darling family. And that’s one spin that Harley Brooke Walker, MFA candidate in puppet arts at the University of Connecticut, is questioning in the story with her innovative nonverbal Darling, or a Guided Adventure in Dismantling the Patriarchy, their thesis project which fuses fairytales, feminism, puppetry, and audience participation at Connecticut Repertory Theatre, Feb. 5-15.
“There’s a lot of patriarchy in the original story,” Walker pointed out. “I wanted to poke at how Wendy is made a mother immediately, how the Lost Boys follow the leader blindly and feel comfortable in their discomfort with Peter, and how Hook stands for a bigger concept of violence and repetition of patriarchal ideas.”
In Darling, Peter and a grown-up Wendy return to Neverland and observe their shadows, i.e., younger versions of themselves, repeat their old patterns. This time around, though, Wendy has more power. “Wendy is able to stop time within the show at key moments because of her own frustration,” Walker explained, “and gives the audience the choice of repeating the story as we’ve all known it or making a different choice within Neverland.”
It’s not typical for an MFA candidate in puppet arts to get a mainstage slot for their thesis project, Walker noted. To handle the unique needs of the show, director Kate Brehm advocated for a research and development period in which designers, movers, and puppeteers have experimented together. “In traditional theatre, there’s a finished script that is ready to go, and the actors get in one room, designers in another,” said Brehm. “Then, during tech, everything comes together. In puppetry, we need to listen to what the puppets are telling us.”
The show’s technical director, MFA candidate Hannah Trobaugh, is also presenting Darling as her thesis project. Indeed, the university environment and the theatre’s support has empowered these artists, you might even say, to choose their own adventure.
