Moses Lake High's 'Peter Pan' opens Thursday

MOSES LAKE - The Moses Lake High School Drama Club will present three performances of Peter Pan this week, beginning Thursday.

Performances will be at 7 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday and a matinee at 2 p.m. Saturday. The cast includes Madisyn Lybbert as Peter, Maddi Cloyd as Wendy, Sara Knapp as Tinkerbelle and Gavin Rummler as Captain Hook.

Director and drama instructor Don Hendrixson said the drama club tries to present a musical every other year, and Peter Pan was a good fit for the available cast. It's also a fun and uplifting story, he said.

Peter Pan is also a huge production, with children who can fly, along with singing pirates, dancing alligators, a fussy nursemaid who's also a dog and a good sword fight or two. There are about 30 people in the cast, counting all the lost boys, Indians, animals and pirates.

Such a big production prompted the drama club to look beyond the high school. "For the last several years we've been bringing in pretty good numbers from the community," Hendrixson said.

It also requires a lot of supervision. "Lots of volunteer parents," Hendrixson said.

Cast moms Constance Glencoe and Michelle Carrelho were sitting in the hallway outside the auditorium last Thursday, making moccasins.

It was their first time making moccasins, they said. In fact, it was their first time doing lots of different tasks. But they each took a deep breath and jumped in the deep end of cast mom tasks.

"Costumes," said Glencoe

"And scenery," said Carrelho.

"Organize meals and snacks," Glencoe said.

"We've never done this stuff before," Carrelho said.

"It's awesome," they said in unison.

It would've been much less awesome without their mentor Tami Lybbert, they said. Lybbert is a mom experienced in the ways of the theater. "We're just her lackeys," Carrelho said.

Hendrixson decided to use a sculpted head for the nanny, and the team of Lybbert, Glencoe and Carrelho built it from scratch. "All by our lonesome. We were covered in purple fuzz when we were done," Glencoe said.

Down the hallway, near the backstage entrance, Tinkerbelle was studying her lines. Well, not exactly. Traditionally Tinkerbelle doesn't have any lines. "I just stand off to the side and make these facial expressions," Knapp said. "And I dance, and some gymnastics."

Knapp didn't try out originally because she heard about the play from her voice teacher after rehearsals began. "I started last week because they needed a Tinkerbelle."

Knapp said she's acted in Missoula Children's Theater productions before. "This is something new." It's more familiar to Captain Hook, who was in the drama club's production of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

"I really love the musicals because of the music," Rummler said; he's in the school's jazz choir. The acting? Well, not so much. "I'm not that good an actor," he said. But the acting is fine once he gets the character down, he said.

He had a medium-sized role in the school's production of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and that helped prepare him for the bigger role, he said.

Tickets will be available at the door.