It’s never too late to return to Neverland in “For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday,” which opens Saturday. Directed by Miriam Monasch, the drama/comedy follows a family of adult siblings through the death of their father.
Produced by Prime Productions and staged at Minneapolis’ Mixed Blood Theatre, the play centers a cast of women over the age of 50, an intentional decision to combat ageism in theater. It’s the first of two shows in the company’s first full season since the pandemic.
“We come from a generation that broke a lot of boundaries and that was a good thing,” said Prime artistic director and co-founder Shelli Place. “And we’re not going back. We’re just going to keep moving forward.”
Prime was founded in 2016 by Place, Alison Edwards and Elena Giannetti in response to the lack of roles available for women of a certain age in the Twin Cities. It’s a struggle both Edwards and Place experienced.
The season before founding Prime, only five roles for women over 50 were available in the Twin Cities theater community, despite there being plenty of talent available.
“We wanted to do something to change the conversation to make it more palatable and better for women over 50, because there were so many talented women who had so much experience — 20, 30, 40 years of experience that weren’t getting a chance,” Place said.
For 40 years, Edwards has worked in theater, spending a majority of her career acting in New York, and described the environment as isolating as she aged.
“It’s a very interesting dynamic that occurs because the younger members of the cast, I think, would assume I was serious or something. And they wouldn’t invite me to go have a drink after our rehearsal,” Edwards said. “It became sort of lonely.”
In collaboration with their original cofounder, Edwards and Place realized they wanted to create and showcase plays that featured at least two older women. Their first play, “Little Wars,” in May 2017, featured seven female roles, five of which were over the age of 50.
Monasch was in the audience for their first performance. As both an actress and director, Monasch jumped at the opportunity to direct with Prime.
“The fact that they’re trying to make women of a certain age more visible, both on and behind the scenes, that feels really important to me,” Monasch said. “I have been told on more than one occasion that I’m too old to direct something, which is very frustrating.”
Looking at the aging process
The frustrations of aging are unpacked in “For Peter Pan,” as the characters grapple with their identities as they grow older. Edwards, playing the character of Ann in the show, described the story as a cathartic and personal experience.
“I think the audience will take away the feeling that everybody faces aging, and even death, in the future and you’re not alone with that,” Place said.
Monasch agreed that this play is an emotional catharsis, having lost a family member this summer.
“Being able to come through that, which was a tragedy, and still come out laughing, loving his memory and remembering all of the sparkle in his eyes,” Monasch said. “Life goes on and you can choose to make it joyous.”
Prime has employed more than 60 older women as actresses, directors, costume designers and more. As a nomad theater, moving among different performance spaces, Prime has been able to perform where they fit.
“We don’t have a brick and mortar. And we like it that way because we do different theaters, whether it’s St. Paul or Midtown or Uptown,” Edwards said. “We go where the play will fit, and so every one becomes magical. We’re broadening everything that we can possibly do.”
Next production
Prime’s second production of the season, the world premiere of “Abuelita” by Nathan Yungerberg, will run in March.
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“All but one in the cast are either Latina, Latino or (multiracial), and it has four women over 50 in it,” Edwards said. “And we are very excited to be broadening our cultural stories, as well as our generational ones.”
Prime is also working to open doors for those working behind the scenes, as well as beginning mentorships in the acting community.
“Ultimately, we would love to become irrelevant. We would love to get to the point where theaters all over the country, all over the world, are featuring plays with women over 50 all the time,” Edwards said “But until that day comes, we want to continue to find new work and ways that we can contribute to changing people’s perceptions about what older women are capable of.”
‘For Peter Pan on her 70th Birthday’
What: “For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday,” written by Sarah Ruhl and directed by Miriam Monasch, follows a family of adult siblings through the death of their father.
When: Oct. 11-26
Where: Mixed Blood Theatre, 1501 S. 4th St., Mpls.
Tickets: $47.50-$32, available at primeprods.org
