Amy Chen ’19: The Episcopal Academy recently received 11 Cappie nominations for its Fall Production Peter and the Starcatcher. The play, which is a prequel to the famous Peter Pan, revolves around Peter Pan and Molly Aster as they discover the power of a mysterious substance called starstuff. Peter Pan and his fellow orphans, the Lost Boys, are aboard a ship which is transporting a trunk containing the “greatest treasure on earth,” a treasure believed to be gold or jewels. Pursued by the Black Stache and his fellow pirates, Molly and the orphans end up shipwrecked on Mollusk Island, where they battle natives and pirates to protect the trunk of starstuff. The play concludes with Peter and Molly bidding each other farewell, with Peter promising to visit Molly in England. While Molly tearfully returns to the real world, Peter and the Lost Boys remain on Mollusk Island, which they renamed Neverland.
The Cappies, best described by Daniel Clay, Theatre Department Chair and Teacher, is a “national organization that promotes high school theater by encouraging high schoolers to see each others’ plays. Episcopal is apart of the Greater Philadelphia Chapter so we compete with all the schools in the greater Philadelphia area.” Clay continues, “We have a group of critics from our school, as does every other school, and that group of critics is required to see a certain number of shows per year at local high schools. These students will go watch the shows and write reviews with student critics from other schools, which are published in the papers. For Peter and the Starcatcher, we had a group of about 30 critics come to our matinee performance and the reviews were published the following Monday.”
When asked to describe the nomination process in particular, Clay says, “The actual Cappie nominations are voted on some time in early to mid April. All the students who have seen the shows go and vote for their favorite actors, actresses, songs, ensembles, and plays in a certain category.”
Not including the nomination for Best Play, a total of 21 individual Episcopal Academy Students were recognized for their talents in both visual and technical theater. Emily Wingfield ‘18, member of the nominated number “The Mollusks,” describes the Cappies as “essentially the Oscars for high school.” Portraying British ship captain Bill Slank, Wingfield says “Peter the Starcatcher was an amazing show and I’m so glad I was a part of it. The cast of this show grew extremely close and we even got to have an exchange student from South Africa participate in the show with us, Nina Hickman.”
Fellow actress Helena Bryant ‘17, a senior that has been on the EA stage since 6th grade, portrayed Molly Aster and talked about the more technical aspects of the show: “Peter and the Starcatcher was very different from a lot of the other fall plays we have done because it’s in the round, which basically means the audience is on all sides. So the show was pretty difficult to stage because your back will be towards an audience member no matter which way you’re facing.” However, despite the difficulty of the staging, the cast of Peter and the Starcatcher clearly overcame this issue as they received the “most nominations out of all schools in [the] region” says Clay.
Clay concludes his thoughts on this year’s Cappies nominations by saying, “We’re very excited. We’ve only had 11 Cappies nominations one other time and that was in 2014 for The Complete Works of William Shakespeare Abridged and we ended up winning best play that year so we’re very hopeful.”
Nominations:
Sound: Gossen Yang ’17 and Jacob Viscusi ’19
Props: Paloma Zozaya ’18, Dejah Cosby ’17, and Anjali Bose ’20
Lighting: Maddie Donatucci ’17
Ensemble: The Mollusks- Adeline Anderson ’18, Phoebe Barr ’19, Brynn Doyle ’18, Nina Hickman (South African exchange student), Amalie Hipp ’18, Daisy Learnard ’18, Ben Lou ’17, and Emily Wingfield ’18
Featured Actor: Jake Landaiche ’19
Comic Actor: Mckee Bond ’19
Supporting Actress: Brooke Kraftson ’19
Supporting Actor: Arnie Shiva ’20
Lead Actress: Helena Bryant ’17
Lead Actor: Greg Smith ’17
Best Play: Peter and the Starcatcher