Peter Pan & Val

Modern Advertising

Val: The first line of the book is,

“All children except one grow up. They soon know they will grow up and how Wendy knew was this...”

Tristan: I've always thought about the role of Wendy. What does she represent?

V: Well, she's making her choice whether to be a child forever. She's got the nurturing mother gene, but she's starting to want something different from Peter Pan. He says, “You’re so weird. Tinkerbell is the same way. She wants something else and I don’t get it. What is it? I don’t have that channel."  Wendy is a deceptively hard role to play. You have to be so plaintive and in it for the story to make sense. She has to be there. 

T: For adolescent girls, that is such a loaded time. Moving from the nursery to all of the weight that is expected of young women which shouldn’t be more complicated and nuanced than what’s expected of boys but kind of is. I always felt really pissed-off that she came to the island, and she became the mom to everyone. 

“I've had a fascination with it forever. I would say kind of with the advent of eBay cause that's when you could name something. If you could name it, you could find it.”

V:  I think it explains why she didn’t stay.  

T: Yeah and that Peter Pan kind of recruited her and then immediately put her into this weird mommy role which is why any tension between the two of them feels super creepy. Because then it’s breaking into the innocent relationship children have. It also highlights the difference in their socialization. Like she has been socialized her whole life to become the caretaker whether she wants that or not. 

Zoe: She gets there and she is given a job. You don’t really think about her brothers in the same way. 

V: It also has to do with age. She's the oldest. 

T: But the decision to make her the oldest—J. M. Barrie chose that for her.  

V: Well, she is a better contrast than if Jon was the oldest. Like you were saying, it just wouldn’t be loaded. There’s more nuance. 

Z: How long have you been collecting Peter Pan?

V: I've had a fascination with it forever. I would say kind of with the advent of eBay cause that's when you could name something. If you could name it, you could find it—or you could search provocative modifiers and then see what came up. And that's the real joy now, finding things I don’t know are out there and surprise me. "Peter Pan" has been adopted as a brand name by thousands of products. 

Z: I'm taking the "Peter Pan" bus next week in NYC. 

V: Just like this one! I love that that's still in operation after all of these years.

“Hanging on the wall here is Sandy Duncan’s sword from the production in 1981… In many peoples' view and I don’t think I disagree, she's the best.”

Modern advertising was kind of born at the beginning of the last century and I think Barrie just sort of shrugged his shoulders and let anyone who wanted to take the name do it. So, all of these people did—whether Peter Pan has anything to do with cigars or pocket watches or whiskey or things you don’t associate—Bras? Underwear? Lingerie? I guess all the associations are happy or promising: eternal youth or something that's fresh. It's something that’s new. Barrie was never litigious. Nobody got sued over this. I think he just let people run with it and then there was no turning back.

This is an Edwardian era Peter Pan corset. I think this was like Downton Abby era, so it was like "You have to wear a corset, but you also have to do your housework so wear this one.”  It’s wool and doesn’t really have bones.

The Peters

My fascination is really with the oldest stuff that I can find. I have very little of the Disney. I think its charming and I don’t begrudge anyone, but it's the easiest to find. I’m really after the harder to find things. 

I’ve got a collection of different things that belonged to the different actresses who have played Peter Pan back to the 50s. Those drumsticks are Cathy Rigby’s, who only recently retired from playing Peter Pan after playing it for 30 odd years. 

This is Maude Adams'. She was the first American Peter Pan. She is who the play was written for. She didn’t do the first couple of productions in London but did it here and played it for 20 odd years. 

Hanging on the wall here is Sandy Duncan’s sword from the production in 1981. She was the next person to play it after Mary Martin. In many peoples' view and I don’t think I disagree, she's the best. She was arguably the most boyish, physically just an athletic specimen. I think she really more than anyone really resisted having a sly wink, like here I am a “girl” playing this “part.” She played it like a little boy. She made you believe.  

This {points to small tray} is going back a little further. There was an actress named Jean Arthur who was in Frank Capra screwball comedies from the 1930’s. She and Mary Martin were neck and neck trying to get to Peter Pan first. They were good friends and they both wanted to play it. Mary Martin got the better adaptation, but Jean Arthur got there first. She led a reclusive life. Left show business and retired to Carmel. When she died, she didn’t have many friends or family and her agent put her stuff up for sale on eBay. This was one of my first things that I got that really made me feel like I was making a collection. This is a little makeup tray that the kids of her cast presented her with. 

Z: It's Shakespearean, in a way—having a woman play Peter Pan.

V: Really it was born of necessity. They hadn't thought when they were dramatizing it about the practicality, but you couldn’t have a child on stage past 8:45 or something. So, a kid couldn’t do the whole play. They can work in factories but not the theater. 

 Z: If you could create your own Peter Pan gallery...

V: Well I’ve done something like that. I've done a show called, "Pan-o-rama". It was a live performance that I did that involved showing the collection but also doing performance pieces that related to things Peter Pan. I did this at ACT. So, I played Barrie and I played scenes from the show and then I talked about my own personal obsession and then I sang rare songs from like the different earlier stage versions. 

Z: Rare songs? 

V: Yeah when Peter Pan was first entering pop culture and radio was really new, people really did dance to their Victrola’s, or they went out to orchestras and I know of at least five or six Peter Pan songs. That LP over there, that was the Peter Pan fox trot. People would dance to it, and if you get on YouTube, you can find multiple orchestras playing it. 

Peter Pan is Complicated

Z: Do you have any particular feelings or thoughts about Barrie as a figure? 

V: Barrie was a complicated, reclusive figure who shunned the spotlight, somewhat incongruous with being a part of the theatre. He was wounded by childhood loss that stayed with him and may have created his desire for escape into fantasy.

Z: Why do you think you love Peter Pan so much? 

V: It's just super volatile psychological characters. It has to do with not necessarily subscribing to society's rules of who you are. If you decide, " No I'm a little boy forever," you just plain make it so. And I think there's sort of a fun layer that is kind of gender fluid in that he is historically mostly been played by female actors. I had an older character actor who played Hook in a very beautiful version tell me that they had a boy playing Peter Pan, and he played it for most of the run and his understudy was a girl, and he got sick for a couple performances and missed it, and he said the show snapped to life in a different way when a female actor was playing it. I think there's something about the audience taking a leap of faith. I’m not taking you just as I scan you, but I'm taking you for who you tell me you are. They're making a magical leap. They are seeing things the way they should be instead of the way they're supposed to be. 

Peter Pan is pretty complicated. He made a choice and got this world that he wanted, but there is something that he'll never have. He'll never have a family. He'll never have a mother. 

Z: Do you have a system of categorization? 

V: No, but I can find things. Actually, this is a good catalyst for me 'cause I recently started my estate planning. A collection is worth more as a collection. It's more interesting. By the time you've curated one together, it should belong together, and so I'm just trying to decide now that I've lost a few people in my life, what happens to your stuff if it doesn’t necessarily mean something to who's going to clean out your apartment. I'm actually looking for the right place to donate my Peter Pan stuff when the time comes. 

Z: I feel like someone would be interested in a Peter Pan archive. 

V: I hope I’ll find that. I want to know that these are going to end up in the right place. So far, the leader of ideas for a place to donate these are the Dumfries Academy in Moat Brae in Scotland where Barrie was from. That was the school that he said he was happiest at. It's now a kids’ library and performance center.

Z: Where do you keep this mostly? 

V: It's kind of folded into boxes into cabinets in the other room.

T: It's too bad you couldn't find a beautiful period apartment. *Said with sarcasm.

V: I'm the luckiest slob alive. 

Z: This is a BMR?  (The BMR program in San Francisco allows people to buy apartments Below Market Rate.)

“I'm starting to see essays that ask, is Peter Pan really the villain? Well, yeah. In some ways he is.”

V: Yes, it is. And it's really unusual 'cause most BMR's are really modern uninteresting boxes outside of market which I would absolutely settle for. 

The best thing that I did for myself was turning down my landlord's buyout. By turning it down and making him throw me out on the Ellis Act, I got priority. There are three ways to get priority in the BMR program: if you are a teacher or a first responder or a displaced tenant. So, I took a risk—and literally, it is names out of a hat. 

Nothing I do to fix it up is waste because it is mine! We painted it three times. It was just wrong the first two. 

Z: Which were the first two colors? 

J: The first was mustard. I’m perversely drawn to Captain Kirk mustard. It just didn't work. Mustard is better not as the main event. 

Hook Ambitions

Z: Do you have any thoughts on the inclusion/depictions of the Indians in the play?

V: The depiction of Native Americans in pop culture has changed drastically since the play was written, but onstage I believe it was always intended as a game of play-acting, the same way the actors played other genders and nursemaid dogs and crocodiles. It is a convention that is rightly being reframed and retired for today’s culture.

Z: Do you think you were aware of the gender dynamics in the play always? Have your thoughts on Peter's gender developed as you've aged?

V: Unconcerned with it as a child, true of most children.  It's another way in which they accept the story without cynicism. Things are what they seem. As an adult, I am interested in the "free pass" it offers a female actor in the role.

I'm an actor. I do interactive characters at events. People hire me to show up as Willy Wonka or the Mad Hatter. The closest I'll get to being Peter Pan—a family I knew asked me to come and be Peter Pan for their daughter’s birthday, and we were sitting on the floor of her room playing and she just looks at me and says, " Peter Pan you’re the greatest."

I'm the Grinch a lot in December now. It's a great antidote to everything that's too cute and too sweet. It's really fun to have an arch sense of humor and kids always get it.

With the Grinch, I get the same energy as Captain Hook. That's a role I really want to play. I've come to realize people’s expectation, since there is no sex in Peter Pan, people still look to Hook to be a leading man, so he's got to be tall and handsome and I’m NOT tall. So, the couple of times I've gotten to go out for the musical, I instantly get typed out with the Smees.  

Z: NO!

V: Yeah! And you should see my Hook! I've got it. I even lied at the last audition. I wore lifts and like a huge heel and I put on my resume the height I was wearing those shoes. And I made it to the final cut and then they cast this guy who looked like Jake Gylenhaal...cause that's who Captain Hook is? I'll get my shot, yet! 

Z: Why is it important for you to play Hook? 

V: I figured one thing out about Hook: There’s the whole story about how Peter Pan cut off his hand and gave it to the crocodile. That whole beautiful symbol of when the clock runs out he's dead because he won’t hear the crocodile coming and the crocodile wants the rest of him. I think he's a resentful little child. I think he's upset that Peter Pan is getting away with what he didn’t manage to do.

That book Vested Interests has a whole chapter about Peter Pan and Captain Hook and how it is kind of a gender reversal. Peter is like a little more obvious as a trans sort of metaphor and Hook is often played as a big old queen. 

T: I kind of always saw Hook as the bridge into the story for adults. Because adults are seen as the villains to children. We have to give them limits and discipline, and so this dance of Peter Pan and Hook is this boundary pushing thing. Hook as a fantasy version of adulthood to children who are seeing themselves as Peter Pan and Wendy.

V: It’s no mistake that it's become the standard for the actor who plays Captain Hook to also play their father in the beginning. He's this sort of blustering thing with adult concerns that you don’t quite understand that's, if not villainous, kind of at cross purposes with you.

T: ‘Cause you don’t understand why your parents make you take baths and go to bed and don’t fly out of windows with strangers. 

Z: I think of Hook and Peter Pan as different layers of the same psyche.  

V: Well they were sprung from the same mind. And if you think of them as alike, who gets under your skin? It's somebody like you. The things that drive us crazy in other people are the things that we hope we don’t have or that we struggle with on our own. There’s a reason they are such excellent foils. 

I'm starting to see essays that ask, is Peter Pan really the villain? Well, yeah. In some ways he is. 

Z: I mean, he's a kidnapper.  

T: Of many children. 

V: Have you read Brom’s Peter Pan? He wrote this great gothic dark Peter Pan and he said his whole jumping off place was in the original novel describing the lost boys and how their numbers changed, “Sometimes there were more and sometimes there were less.” Well what happened to them? Where did they go and how do you get more? Was Peter Pan like enticing them? The journey to get to Neverland WASN’T CUTE. You had to go through the underworld.  

T: There is something really sinister about Peter Pan. 

V:  It's deeply psychological which is what leads to the fascination and maybe why people want to like, put him on a can of soup.

Jef Valentine is a San Francisco based actor, drag performer, costumer and collector.  His show "Pan-o-Rama" explored the creation and cultural phenomenon of Peter Pan, earning him a Theatre Bay Area Award nomination for Best Solo Performance. He has performed with theatre companies throughout the Bay Area and for 15 years was the inventory manager of American Conservatory Theatre's costume department.  Along with Rosie Radiator and the Rad Tap Dance Team, he holds the Guinness World record for longest distance tap dance (9.6 miles) You can visit his website here.

He encourages you to support Oasis Nightclub and Cabaret, the hub of queer culture in the bay area, currently serving up "Meal on Heels"; dinner, drinks and a live drag performance delivered to your door! sfoasis.com