Don’t judge a book by its cover, and don’t judge a dragon by its fire-breathing roar.
That’s the message of The Reluctant Dragon, the play PCPA Theaterfest’s Outreach Tour is currently performing at local schools and libraries.
Based on the 1898 children’s story by Kenneth Grahame and adapted by PCPA’s own Roger DeLaurier, The Reluctant Dragon is about a young boy who befriends the dragon who lives on the outskirts of his medieval village.
“The boy is really big on reading and his parents aren’t,” outreach coordinator Leo Cortez said. “So when he hears there’s a dragon near the village, he starts reading about dragons.”
Armed with the power of knowledge, the boy bravely sets out to find the dragon’s lair. But the scaly beast the boy discovers is much different than what he expected to find. This dragon is more of a renaissance man than an eater of man.
“The dragon tells the boy the rest of the villagers are petrified of him [because he’s a dragon], but all he wants to do is write poetry and drink tea,” Cortez explained.
Years before dragon and boy met, Cortez explained, all the other dragons pillaged and destroyed villages up and down the countryside. Rather than hurting humans, our peace-loving, fire-breathing hero went into hiding. When he finally rejoined civilization, all the other dragons had destroyed themselves.
The king, in response to the villagers’ fear, sends an honorable knight to kill the dragon, and the boy is the only person who can save the dragon from the knight’s deadly, sharp sword.
“The boy mediates a meeting between the knight and the dragon,” Cortez said.
After a lengthy discussion, the two characters agree they don’t have to fight, so they stage one.
Cortez said program staffers thought the lessons in the play—“never judge a book by its cover” and “fighting never leads to anything but destruction”—would really resonate with children.
“I’d talked to some teachers who said they were having trouble with kids judging each other,” he said. “The messages in this play are great for kids.”
And the production value is great, too: The show features a set made out of storybooks and two full-scale puppets, including the larger-than-life dragon and the knight’s noble steed.
“Our goal at PCPA is to create theater for children versus children’s theater,” he said. “Children’s theater can tend to pander to children. PCPA creates plays for which the main audience is children—material that talks up to children as opposed to talking down to them.”
PCPA founder Donovan Marley launched the children’s outreach program alongside the professional theater company in 1964.
“They used to do it in an old airport hangar with curtains and bleachers for the kids to sit in,” he said.
Actors started performing at schools in the 1970s, using students’ writing. The program as it is today started in the 1980s.
The philosophy behind PCPA Outreach, Cortez said, is “children are your future audience, and the earlier you expose them to the arts, the more appreciation they’ll have for it when they’re exposed to it as adults.”
Now even more kids will get to see outreach performances at their local schools and libraries, thanks to a $32,000 grant from the Santa Barbara Foundation that allows schools to apply for scholarships.
“It’s enabled us to bring our shows to more schools—those that are not usually able to see the shows,” Cortez said, adding that a performance typically costs $400.
The price goes down to $300 each if the school books more performances.
The program has toured The Reluctant Dragon and its junior high and high school production, Lifeboat, at locations throughout San Luis Obispo and Northern Santa Barbara counties.
“Our funds are pretty limited because of the state budget,” Alvin Elementary School principal Ann McDaniel said. “A lot of our kids don’t get opportunities to go out and see plays and performances in our community. They’re always excited to see the shows, and they get exposure to something they don’t usually see on television.”
In both outreach productions, four intern actors—Sean Peters, Andy Babinski, Jennifer Rose Hijazi, and Rachael VanWormer—play all of the parts. All of the actors also have parts in PCPA’s holiday show, The Wizard of Oz.
“They’re the busiest actors at PCPA. They’ll be on the road Tuesday through Friday, sometimes from 5 a.m. to 4 p.m., and then they have performances in the evenings too,” Cortez said. “It’s been a very full fall for them.”
The actors and the rest of the program staffers will soon get a break from performing when the Marian Theatre closes in early 2013 for several months of scheduled maintenance and renovation. Main-stage shows will continue at the Clark Center for the Performing Arts and the Solvang Festival Theater, but the outreach will go on hiatus until the fall.
“We had to cut the season short because we knew we couldn’t function without the theater space and the shops to produce our shows,” Cortez said. “We can’t do shows without the support of the shops. They do our costumes and our sets and provide storage space.”
So children will have to wait to see the magic of theater at their schools, but it definitely seems to be worth the wait.
Managing Editor Amy Asman believes in magic. Contact her at aasman@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Dec 13-20, 2012.
