Creating Peril

From Peril on the Red Planet Director, Mollye Maxner ......

It is June, with only a few weeks remaining before Peril rehearsals begin in August! As I prepare for the exhilarating work ahead, I am thinking about our journey so far toward the realization of this brand new play: we have a script and score in hand, set and costumes being made, and a cast ready to delve into the world of the Red Planet.

On this rainy June day, (no such days on Mars!) I am reading through the script of Peril, preparing for how we will bring these characters and this far off world to life in visually and physically exciting ways. Not so long ago (less than six months!) I sat with the other script writers, Shona Simpson and Brian Sutow, and our composer, James Stewart, and we pondered what kind of of story we wanted to tell. What challenges faced us!

The mission: to write a play for upper elementary and middle school students that connects to the North Carolina Standard Course of Study and is in close relationship with NASA's Imagine Mars Program. Where do we begin? Unlike writing something based on an historical occurrence, or enlivening an already written story, we had the challenge of writing a story from scratch, imagining not only what life might be like on Mars in the future, but also what issues might face the people living on the Red Planet.

We had the great opportunity to talk to a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab and find out where the science and technology is at the moment--and where they think things might be in the future. We spoke about how humans living on Mars will likely be able to get oxygen from ice. Imagine looking out your window in the morning and seeing your friends on their "tractors" heading out for daily ice harvesting! We spoke about the geography of the planet--how the planet was once much like Earth, with water and rivers and weather much like ours. And we discussed the potentials of Olympus Mons to provide energy to humans through pockets of magma deep in the volcano.

The science provided some of the important and intriguing details of the world of the play, but what about the story and the characters? What's important to us right now in thinking about humans living on other planets? How do might the issues of a teenager growing up on Mars be the same or different from teenagers on Earth?

Well, through many many many drafts, with each of us writers taking on different scenes and then passing them back and forth for revisions, we came upon something that we all believe in deeply. The totally original story of Peril on the Red Planet is a coming of age journey that unearths the challenges of responsibility, bravery, and working together. It's central theme is the courage to move forward no matter the difficulty.

How wonderfully appropriate that the theme of the play is what each of us (director, composer, designer, writer, performer) must do to create the play: collaborate bravely and keep the story moving forward...so that soon we can share it all with you!

As the lyrics of the opening song say:

We have a tale to tell you
Listen close and listen hard
It's funny and it's scary and it all takes place on Mars
At the center is a question that each one of us must face:
How do we progress, how do we propel the human race
Responsible and Bravely and we live in outer space?
So you see my friends, the time has come to act,
Because we live when Science Fiction is becoming Science FACT!

Signing off for now!

Mollye

P.S. Check back for News from the "MARS OUTPOST" as the process continues...