Young Actors Visit the Place Where Peter Pan Began Before Reviving JM Barrie’s “Lost” First Play
Scottish Youth Theatre and Moat Brae Trust collaborate to bring Bandelero the Bandit and scenes from Peter Pan to the stage
Young actors from across Scotland have visited the house and garden which inspired Peter Pan, before going on stage to revive JM Barrie’s “lost” first play after nearly 140 years.
They were in Dumfries for a rehearsed reading of Bandelero the Bandit as part of a collaboration between Scottish Youth Theatre and the Peter Pan Moat Brae Trust.
The event helped launch a final £1.5m drive to restore the derelict Moat Brae House, where Barrie played as a boy and which inspired his greatest work. The plan is for it to be turned into a National Centre for Children’s Literature and Storytelling, complete with a Neverland Discovery Garden, due to open to the public in 2017.
Barrie was 17 when he wrote and staged Bandelero at Dumfries Academy, where he was a pupil. He later believed that the play had been destroyed and wrote, with clear regret: “No page of it remains …”
The rehearsed reading of Bandelero took place at the Academy and also included some of the much-loved nursery scenes from Barrie’s most famous work, Peter Pan.
Katee McCulloch, aged 19, from Edinburgh, said: “It’s amazing to be in the place which inspired one of the best-known stories of all time and then to be going to Dumfries Academy to bring JM Barrie’s first ever play back to the stage in the very place where it was first performed.”
Euan Ferguson, aged 17, from Glasgow, added: “I am the same age as JM Barrie when he wrote Bandelero. It is an inspiring and motivational thought, and it makes me realise that we are all capable of great things. I hope our audience will feel the same way tonight.”
Joanna Lumley has created a new campaign video which is on the Moat Brae website to help with the £5.5m appeal, which has already secured £4m.
Cathy Agnew, PPMBT Project Development Director, said: “It’s a lovely little moment in theatrical history to be able to bring Bandelero back to Dumfries Academy.
“The young people from SYT have been fantastic, they have really thrown themselves into the project with huge enthusiasm. There couldn’t have been a better way to launch our final £1.5m appeal.”
PPMBT and SYT’s Bandelero project will last three years and will culminate in a full production of the play in the summer of 2017 to coincide with the opening of Moat Brae. Bandelero is a melodramatic and somewhat over the top tale that follows the adventures of an accused man. The wider aim of this collaboration is to inspire today’s young Scots by showing them something of Barrie’s achievements and give them the confidence to pursue their own dreams of careers in the performing arts and wider creative industries.
Fraser MacLeod, Associate Artistic Director of the Glasgow-based SYT, said: “Scottish Youth Theatre is delighted to be working with the Moat Brae Trust on such an exciting project. As Scotland’s national youth theatre, we always strive to establish partnerships across communities to enable young people to explore and to reach their creative potential.
“We hope that Bandelero will not only inspire a new generation of performers and theatre-makers, but will also trigger the creative forces in all young people regardless of their background or career choices.”
The PPMBT appeal will see Moat Brae House restored with the addition of a café, shop and education/performance spaces. The Neverland-themed Discovery Garden will celebrate the importance of play and adventure. Creative planting and artistic installations will celebrate the heritage, characters and stories of childhood.
JM Barrie’s ‘enchanted land’ will once again be a place to inspire imagination giving groups and individuals of all ages the freedom to explore, invent stories and discover as the young author did over a hundred years ago.
The full cast list for the readings is:
• Imogen Craven, 20, St Andrews
• Jonathon Combe, 19, Blantyre
• Euan Ferguson, 17, Glasgow
• Tom Higgins, 18, Glasgow
• Sean Langdon, 17, Glasgow
• Chris McDougall, 20, Perth
• Katee McCulloch, 19, Edinburgh
• Campbell McKenna, 16, East Kilbride
• Mark Walker, 18, Glasgow
The reading also forms part of a children’s literature symposium weekend hosted by The Solway Centre, the University of Glasgow and the University of Edinburgh.
Main Picture caption reads: Peter Pan Moat Brae Trust’s National Storytelling Centre appeal launch by Joanna Lumley, Dumfries, Scotland, UK, 26/06/2015
Scottish Youth Theatre and Moat Brae Trust collaborate to bring Bandelero the Bandit and scenes from Peter Pan to the stage:
Performers from Scottish Youth Theatre from around Scotland perform famous children’s author JM Barrie’s lost play “Bandelero The Bandit” in Moat Brae House.
The play was written by Barrie as a pupil at the next-door Dumfries Academy and performed there in 1877 when he was just 17. He later thought it had been destroyed, but was recently discovered in the USA. Moat Brae House Trust today launched it’s final drive for £1.5M to become Scotland’s National Storytelling Centre.
