This week, many of our students were able to attend “Peter and the Starcatcher,” a local performance at the Fine Arts Center. A total of 148 students attended the play, including students from band, drama, dance, english 3 and 4 and the block 4 program.

Caleb Hall (11) attended the program, and thought it was very well done. “They did a wonderful job with the use of stage, the use of the actors abilities,” said Hall. “I thought it was interesting that they were able to have multiple actors play different roles, and thats always one of my favorite things to see. The set was so interactive, and they could use different set pieces for different functions.” With every play, there are things to improve on also.” Hall said, “I feel that the selling of who Peter Pan would’ve turned out to be could have been just a little more enhanced.”

After the final act, the actors changed and came out on the stage to answer questions. Among these actors was Michael Lee, a former Manitou High School student. Lee has also preformed in “Dracula,” “Wait Until Dark” and “White Christmas” with the Fine Arts Center. He portrayed two different roles in the play, and displayed talent.

“He (Michael) has laser focus and the ability to commit totally to the character no matter what what the character is. Even in high school, he would go really deep into his portrayals. When he was Slank (one of his characters), at first when he was doing the whip scene, I thought, ‘oh he’s having fun right now.’ If you watched him, not when he was the main character, but at one point he was back and he was being a parrot, and he was totally into being that parrot. So he does really good detail work, and he doesn’t do anything halfway,” said Wendy Harms, high school drama teacher. Harms worked with Lee while he was still in high school.

As for his performance, Lee played two characters. Slank was his bigger role, and he was the captain of the ship named “Neverland”. His other character was Hawking Clam, the son of the leader on the island they’re stranded on. Harms also enjoyed watching him portray these characters. “I though it was lovely. I thought that overall for the whole cast, that it was a pretty even cast. He has a really high standard for himself on stage, and its very rarely that I’ve seen him not meet that standard,” she said.