She’s learning to fly Orono High School graduate comes home to soar

Kate Kenney had to come home to learn to fly.

The 25-year-old actress spent countless hours in the late 1990s while a student at Orono High School onstage with the Penobscot Theatre Company. She performed in four productions including “King Lear” and “School for Wives,” but she never had an opportunity to fly until now.

Kenney, who’s based in New York City, is playing Wendy in PTC’s production of “Peter Pan” that opens today at the Bangor Opera House. A 2000 graduate of Orono High School who went on earn her bachelor’s degree from Rutgers University, she always wanted to play the girl who ran away to Neverland but never thought her dream could come true.

“I’m not a singer,” she said during a rehearsal last week, “and most theater companies perform the musical version, so I didn’t think I’d get to do it.”

Scott R.C. Levy, PTC’s producing artistic director, decided to stage Scottish playwright J.M. Barrie’s 1904 version of “Peter Pan” this year instead of “A Christmas Carol.” Audiences appeared to have grown weary of the holiday chestnut and ticket sales had fallen by a third over the past seven years.

Although Barrie’s script is in the public domain so the company saved money on royalties, everything else about mounting “Peter Pan” has not been easy or inexpensive.

“The cast of 27 – and 12 of them are under age 17 – is twice as large as ‘A Christmas Carol,’ production costs are twice as high and it takes eight people working backstage to fly performers for each show,” Levy said.

There are only two companies in the world that do the kind of flying required for “Peter Pan,” according to the director. PTC went with ZFX Flying, a 12-year-old company based in Louisville, Ky., because its harnesses are considered to be more comfortable than others. ZFX staff also works with the artistic staffs of companies to accommodate particular visions.

Brian Owens, a ZFX flying instructor based in Louisville, arrived with the equipment on Dec. 5. He spent a day installing it in the theater and two days working with the actors and local stagehands teaching them to how to use it. He left on Dec. 8 for his next assignment.

The flying mechanism is a track and pulley system, which uses one-eighth-inch aircraft cable to connect to the harnesses worn by actors under their costumes. It takes two people each to fly Wendy and Peter. One person controls their up and down motion and another their vertical motions.

“It’s fantastic,” Kenney said of flying. “The first time I did it, I had a giggling attack. It’s strange and surreal and wonderful. Flying is totally a dream come true.”

The risk of ditching the traditional Christmas show appears to be paying off, Levy said.

“Ticket sales are 30 percent faster than they were last year and people are buying five and six tickets, which means multi-generational families are coming together,” he said. “Our four school matinees sold out in October.”

Whether Levy’s greatest creative risk, casting a man in a part that has traditionally been played by a woman, will be as well received remains to be seen.

Only about 10 percent of the actors who portray Peter Pan each year are men, Levy said, citing a figure provided by the ZFX Flying. Traditionally, the part has been played by a woman. The musical version of the play was written for Mary Martin, but even in the original 1904 production Peter Pan was played by 37-year-old Nina Boucicault.

The reason why a woman was chosen to play the part has not survived, according to Levy. It could have been because she would have been easier to fly or because a woman appeared more “pixieish.” It also could have been related to Britain’s labor laws that made it too expensive to cast a child of 12 or 13, the age Peter is in boy years, in the role.

Levy is very clear on why he chose Jonah Spear, 26, of New York City for the pivotal role.

“I started out auditioning women because I thought that was how it was supposed to be,” he said. “Today, you really have to suspend your disbelief to believe a woman is a boy. Plus, there’s all that undercurrent between Peter and Wendy. In the end, I decided to go with a male and it all fell into place when I saw Jonah.”

Spear, who grew up in Litchfield, Conn., spent his teenage years as a competitive gymnast, then went into the performing arts. Somewhere along the way, he fell in love with flying – not the kind he does in “Peter Pan” – the kind immortalized in the song, “That Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze.”

He has tumbled into walls on “The Late Show with David Letterman,” flown off trampolines at City Center and filmed a special for Cirque du Soleil in Montreal. Despite all that experience, he’d never flown in a harness as he does in the PTC production.

Spear’s also has never seen a man play Peter Pan, but has had “a couple of girlfriends who played the part” that he consulted. The actor believes that the power of Barrie’s story is not based on the boy’s desire to never grow up but is deeply rooted in the myths, expectations and realities of motherhood.

“There’s something really powerful about a boy and his mother,” he said. “Peter’s desire for a mother is so pure. But he’s also furious at his mother for abandoning him.”

Spear, who has spent summers as a camp counselor, said that he’s seen firsthand the problem Peter and Wendy have in trying to build a relationship. He wants a mother, but she wants something more.

“One year at camp, word went around that this 11-year-old boy and girl were ‘dating,'” the actor said. “At the end of one day, a counselor said that she’d overheard the girl say, ‘All he wants to do is hold a basketball and all I want to do is hold his hand.’ That’s why when Wendy wants to be more than a mother, Peter says to Tinkerbell, ‘Come on, Tink. We don’t want any silly mothers.'”

Levy, however, said that the play is for every mother, silly or not, along with fathers who wish they didn’t have to grow up, boys who want to be pirates and girls who want to fly.

“Wanting to fly, nobody grows out of that,” Kenney said.

The show will run Friday, Dec. 14, through, Sunday, Dec. 23. For tickets, call 942-3333 or 877-PTC-TIXX. Judy Harrison may be reached at jharrison@bangordailynews.net or 990-8207.