Lost Girl: The Unveiling of the Future of Interlochen’s Theatre Company
Written by Charlie Bliwas and Georgia Turner
“What if I spend the rest of my life without being felt? I want to be felt. I want to feel. I have to find him.” One of the theater shows during the fall semester of 2024, was Lost Girl by Kimberly Belflower. Directed by Christine Marie Brown, the show explores what happened to Wendy Gale after Peter Pan left her. It is a beautiful story of love, growing up, and the power of true friendship. The show had a large cast, including Wendy’s friends, a detective, Wendy’s mother, and other victims of Peter Pan. It is an hour long show in which Wendy goes on an adventure to refind Peter Pan. Such a story was perfect for the cast of all freshmen to take on as their first IAA show. They had been rehearsing diligently from the start of the school year, and finally got to share their work with the public on Nov. 19-20 in the Harvey Theatre.
The Interlochen Times sat down with Ms. Brown to discuss the process. Ms. Brown earnestly stated that the greatest joy of the process was “working with the freshmen, and watching them grow. With the cast, it has been such a thrill to watch them get more confident in the [ownership] of the show.”
Further, Ms. Brown stressed, “The most important lesson I wanted to get through to the students is that you have a responsibility to your ensemble and to yourself. The great lesson about acting is that it’s all about your partners.” She commented, “You can’t make it about the other person until you know your lines, and then you can just let them happen. The great paradox of acting is you have to know it so well that you can forget it.”
From one audience member’s perspective, the show was “captivating, intense, emotionally fraught, funny, relatable, and engaging.” It is an understatement to say there was not one dry eye in the audience. Every spectator was on the edge of their seats, leaning toward the actors on stage. The hard work of the freshman class shone brightly through the performance. There was something even more impressive about this performance. “This is the first time for so many things,” Ms. Brown entailed. “Some of them have never done a play before.”
The Interlochen Times interviewed several of the cast members of Lost Girl. Asking questions about the process and the director, the cast responded enthusiastically. They all had different ideas to add to the conversation. When asked what it was like to work with Ms. Brown for their first Interlochen show, one of the freshmen gushed about how Ms. Brown “made the cast feel like a family.” Another freshman exclaimed that “they couldn’t ask for a better director.”
When asked about her motivation for directing Lost Girl, Ms. Brown explained, “Lost Girl is based on a story that everyone knows. Every generation that’s living now has some relationship with the story of Peter Pan. The themes are timeless. Questions of growing up and questions about what defines an adventure are explored in this play. In the novel, Wendy says to Peter, ‘There’s no greater adventure than growing up.’ And also because it’s hard to grow up. It’s really hard, and I was looking for material that would be great for specifically fourteen-year-old actors to do.”
“It was a really great fit for the age, and it is an ensemble piece, and it was written by a woman, and it was the exact number of roles as the freshman performers that we had,” Ms. Brown commented.
The process and performance unveiled the future of the IAA Theatre department; after seeing the show, it is safe to say that the future shines brightly.