The family that plays together…

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/11/2015 (3973 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

wfpvideo:4596462060001:wfpvideo

Peg and the Yeti is the play that puts the “play” in play.

The second production of MTYP’s season, Peg is an adaptation of Kenneth Oppel’s popular children’s story about a young girl who decides she’s going to climb Mount Everest, where she meets the monster of the title.

The book gets a new wrinkle in the theatre adaptation by Monica Dufault, according to the play’s director (and MTYP artistic director) Pablo Felices-Luna.

“When Monica created the adaptation, she took… one line about how (Peg) lives in a boat with her parents and decided: That’s what the play is,” says Felices-Luna, who helped workshop the piece from its original production at Carousel Theatre in St. Catharines, Ont., where he was an artistic director for seven years.

“So this whole adventure to climb the mountain becomes the game that’s being played,” he says.

Recommended primarily for kids between the ages of three and seven, the show enlists its audience to enter the theatre and come aboard the “boat” on either side of the theatre’s rarely employed “alley” stage configuration.

“We’re all friends of Peg’s and she’s invited us to go on a fishing trip with her parents,” Felices-Luna says of the set-up. “We sit on the boat with her and as we set sail, she gets this idea in her head that she wants to climb Mount Everest.

“Everything that happens in the play is being fuelled by her parents,” he says. “They’re making the adventure happen. They’re even the ones who become the Yeti.”

Two of the cast members, Peg and her dad, are played by Jennifer Balen and Mark Crawford, actors who originated the roles with the Carousel Theatre five years ago. Peg’s mom is played by local actress Ntara Curry.

Felices-Luna says he hopes the actors will engage kids, but also inspire their parents to take “play” seriously.

“We had a technical run and we invited a few staff members to come, because I’m always curious about their take on things,” he says. “One of them told me: ‘I feel like this play is an open challenge to all parents to play with their kids.’

“It’s important to keep in mind that everything you see Peg’s parents do, you could do in your own home,” Felices-Luna says. “There’s no advanced technology, there’s no magical trick in it; it’s really just about the joys — and the exhaustion — of getting down on the ground and playing with your kids, and doing so with an open heart.

“It’s about how it not only brings you closer with your children, it makes you closer as parents to each other.”

Felices-Luna should know. The play isn’t the only thing he’s helped nurture from infancy.

“I’ve been with the show for about five years, and even I’ve changed through the life of the show, because five years ago, I only had my first-born,” he says.

Now Felices-Luna is the father of three daughters, all under the age of seven.

“Now, I think there’s a lot more resonance for me, personally, in the balancing act that you have to play, in those moments things don’t go smoothly and you still have to parent within the game and how you manage that.”

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca