Editor’s note: This week, Broadway in Portland brings the touring production of Native playwright Larissa FastHorse’s new adaptation of the 1954 musical Peter Pan to Keller Auditorium. The 2020 MacArthur Prize winner previously visited Portland for Artist Repertory Theatre’s 2018 world premiere production of her The Thanksgiving Play, which went on to Broadway last year. That premiere coincided with Oregon productions of plays by two other Native women playwrights that year, And So We Walked by DeLanna Studi (Cherokee Nation), and Manahatta by Mary Kathryn Nagle (Cherokee Nation). Portland playwright Amber Kay Ball spoke with FastHorse about Peter Pan, Portland and more. Her answers have been edited for clarity and continuity.

Problematic Classic

Larissa FastHorse: As a Native American woman, I had really avoided Peter Pan for my life. When the producers and the director came to me through my agent, I said, no, absolutely not. I want nothing to do with it. My agent said, let’s just do due diligence and read it. I said, okay, fine, I’ll read it and then I’ll pass on Monday. By Monday, I will admit, I was converted. 

The version that I’m adapting is the Jerome Robbins Broadway version. A lot of people know that version had Mary Martin, Cathy Rigby, and different folks over the years. There’s a lot of really wonderful stuff in this show, and there’s a reason it’s endured for so many generations. The problem was it did have things that caused harm. 

I said if we can fix the harm, and if I have the freedom and the agency to make the changes that need to be done, then I’m in. They said, absolutely, we’re going to follow your lead, and they really did, which is amazing. 

What I said was, what is Neverland? What’s the magic of Neverland? It’s that you never grow old. So if the magic of Neverland is that you never grow old, let’s have a reason that Indigenous people are there. There’s no reason in the previous versions. They are just there with magical things and we don’t know why. 

Also in the previous versions, if you read it carefully, there’s never a reason why the Lost Boys and the Indians are fighting. It’s just assumed that if Indians are there, you fight them. So I said, we’ve got to fix both of those things. We’re not magical creatures. 

New Perspectives

I decided that Tiger Lily is the leader of her people, as opposed to the daughter of a Chief. She and all of her people are the last of an Indigenous culture that has gone extinct in this world. When they come down to the last person of their culture, they go to Neverland, a place where you never grow old, so they can preserve their culture and keep it safe in hopes of bringing it back to this world one day. That’s how I used the magic of Neverland to be a positive and a help for these different Indigenous peoples, as opposed to a negative. 

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Then we had to come up with reasons from Neverland mythology of why these people are fighting and why they’ve had this feud. They’ve been there together for an eternity. Lots of stuff  has gone down, and so we fill in that story.

The one other thing that was really important to me as a Native American person was, people have always played red face in the show, and I didn’t want that to happen. So I specified in the script that Tiger Lily, and a second speaking character, Acoma, are from ancient cultures in North America – Acoma specifically from Cahokia. 

Then the rest of the tribe can be from anywhere in the world; there’s Indigenous people all over the planet. That means, except for those two characters, everybody else can just play a version of who they are. So for instance, we have a young man whose ancestry goes back to Japan. So we found an extinct culture from Japan that he’s portraying. We have a woman who is from Eastern Europe and so we have an ancient Slavic culture that she’s portraying. So hopefully for the future, this becomes the licensed version everyone can do. Everybody can hire people to play who they are and not have to play red face again.

Broad Appeal

When Lonnie Price and I were developing the show … we wanted people who loved Peter Pan to be able to come to the show and see the Peter Pan they loved. We didn’t want to ruin it for them. Two, we wanted to make sure the show never caused harm anymore. Three, we wanted to make sure that any people from any social, economic, gender, racial and cultural background could look out their window and believe that Peter Pan could fly by. 

One of the first previews we did, they were interviewing children that came out of the show, and a little girl said, “I love Wendy because she’s both kind and smart.” A lot of children love Tiger Lily because she’s strong and fierce. It is really exciting to hear the mix of love for characters beyond, of course, iconic Peter and Hook. 

In the past, these two women characters didn’t sing, didn’t dance, didn’t fight – didn’t have a lot of agency. They have a scene now where the two women speak to each other without Peter. And that’s something that hadn’t happened before this. I’m really excited to see how it’s affecting young people that come in the audience. It’s been a lot of fun. 

Full Circle Moment

Portland has such a special place in my heart because that’s the launching [pad] of Thanksgiving Play, which is what changed my life and took me to Broadway, which ultimately took me to Peter Pan. Being there at that time with three Native American women playwrights was incredible. Unprecedented at the time, but not anymore. There’s so many more Native playwrights being produced all over the place which is really exciting. 

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To come back with this show is an incredible full circle moment. I started at Artist Repertory Theatre, a beautiful but small theater. To be able to share these characters, this huge Broadway production at Keller Auditorium is really exciting. 

There’s such an incredible Indigenous community and appreciation of Indigenous culture in Portland. Plus, this incredible art scene and the theater scene there is so rich, vibrant and varied. 

Advice for Theater Makers

Do it. Get out there! Keep writing! Keep doing your things! 

I’m in Seattle right now and I was talking to some young folks and one is an Indigenous writer. She asks, “what do I need to do?” I said, “just keep writing. One play isn’t enough. You need five. You need five plays to send out.”

If you’re an actor, you have to be in training. Getting stronger all the time. Keeping your tools sharp. You have to keep working at it and work at your craft. You have to keep networking and getting to know people and most importantly, you need to find your people. 

I am not right for everyone. I’m very fortunate. I’ve been produced all over the country for several years now. There’s plenty of theaters that have no interest in working with me. Because it’s just not right for them. It’s not right for the sense of learning. That’s great. I respect that. I kind of would be nervous the day that I’m right for everybody. I’d be worried. Like, what am I doing wrong? 

So you have to really be tenacious and be clear on who you are and what your voice is so that the people that want that, the people that get you, can find you. If you’re trying to be someone else, if you’re trying to hide who you are, if you’re trying to sound like whoever or what you think people want to be, the people who want you, can’t find you. You’ve just got to hone your voice, hone your point of view, and stay true to it and give them time. 

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Thanksgiving Play – I remind people again and again – it’s been one of the most produced plays in America for several years now. It was my most rejected play for years. I’ve never had so much rejection from a play as I did with that one. Because it had to find its people and it had to find its time. Once it did, now it’s produced everywhere. So I just kept submitting and kept believing in it. Success can sometimes look like four years of rejection and you just have to keep going. 

Hopes for Indigenous Playwrights

I hope for a million things. I hope they get to write whatever they want, as much as they want. I hope they’re given the resources that non-Indigenous playwrights are given. I hope they’re given the benefit of the doubt. They’re given trust. 

That’s something I finally have where I can talk to theaters, say, ‘This is what I want to do,’ and they say, ‘we trust you to do that.’ That didn’t happen before Thanksgiving Play. I always had to prove myself over and over and over again. 

And I hope that they get to have trust and the benefit of the doubt in the way that they vision and dream. I hope they get to have community. We had that beautiful moment in Portland last time I was there. I was so thrilled to share that with Mary Kathryn (Nagle) and DeLanna (Studi). But that’s the only time I’ve ever had community with other Native playwrights when I was working somewhere. And I hope that becomes the norm and happens again and again. 

I hope they get to write about anything they want. I hope they get to write about Native stories and non-Native stories. That they don’t feel that they have to represent themselves in one particular way to be considered a Native American playwright. Anything we write is Native American because we are. 

Finally, I hope that they get to feel that they have the agency to have an Indigenous space and process if they wish. But I also hope that they don’t feel like they have to do that. That it’s automatic, it’s there and they know that Indigenous audiences, actors and advisors are taken care of. So they don’t have to do all that. 

Because, right now, my job is still to do all of those things, and I would love to just write, enjoy that part of it and be in production. It’s getting better all the time. But I hope that our future Indigenous writers get to just focus on their art and their craft, do the parts they love and that would be really exciting. 

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Larissa FastHorse’s new adaptation of Peter Pan (score by Morris “Moose” Charlap, lyrics by Carolyn Leigh, additional lyrics by Betty Comden, Adolph Green & Amanda Green, and additional music by Jule Styne) runs August 27 – September 1 at Keller Auditorium. Tickets here.