The Upper School Theater Ensemble’s original adaptation of Peter Pan (which opens this week, April 17, 2026!) begins with a song called “10 Million Miles” by Patty Griffith. The full, original recording is from a live concert, and Patty spends the first minute or so talking to her audience about “send-you-on-your-merry-way songs” and the fact that the melody for this one is probably a rip-off of a Bob Dylan song. 

“But,” she says, “Dylan probably ripped it off from somebody else—it’s one of those melodies that’s up for grabs, anyway.”

That sentence has been pinging around in my head since this project’s early days. Adapting a well-beloved classic is a daunting undertaking. With every decision to alter the familiar comes a slew of questions: Is this change merited? Does it help or hinder the story I want to tell? Is it true to the essence of the original story? Will the fact that it is unfamiliar excite the audience, and make them lean further into our story, or will it make them mad, and take them out of the story? (How mad can we make them?)

But the more I looked at the original source material, the more I realized how genuinely flexible it is and, I think, was meant to be. J.M. Barrie himself edited and re-released the original play several times over a period of twenty-eight years. Since then, it has undergone hundreds of iterations in theater, film, literature, visual art, music, dance, theme park rides—you name it. Even before it entered the public domain a few years ago, the questions at the core of Peter Pan pulled artists in all kinds of directions as they searched for ways to explore and respond with honesty. It was “one of those melodies that’s up for grabs.” The good ones always are. 

Isn’t it right to respond to a beautiful creation by creating something beautiful in return?

I love the original script which Barrie first published in 1904, but I am beyond grateful for the opportunity to explore it from a new angle with this particular cast and crew in 2026. 

Plumbing the depths of story and character motivation with each actor in rehearsal means that, most days, we are spending time discussing things like the nature of hope, the role of the  imagination, the twisting influence of fear, the courage it takes to love well, the difference between “childish” and “child-like,” survival methods for times of grief, and the function of memory—just to name a few. We’ve also spent plenty of time (and, still, never enough time) playing Leap Frog.

Over the past four months of rehearsals (and the nearly two years of thinking and writing before then), the story has been moulded by our questions and discussions, our sounds, our movement, our fingerprints on set pieces and props and costumes. I expect that people around the world will continue to adapt Peter Pan for years and years, but it will never look, feel, or sound exactly like ours.

That’s the beauty and the tragedy of live, time-bound art. It’s the beauty and the tragedy of life.

What an awfully big adventure to be a part of it with these students.