Disney’s Peter Pan Jr. completed its run on Saturday March 15, and what a run it was.  The cast performed twelve shows, nine of which were totally sold out!  (The other shows had only about 5 tickets left, which is awesome!)

16 of the 30 cast members were in their first OKTC Main Cast Company show, which is pretty amazing.  They all worked incredibly hard, and performed so well!

Here are a few of the things I’ve learned over the three months working on this show!

• Pretty much everything from my post, What I’ve Learned: Little Mermaid Edition applied to this cast.  Sharpie’d names on the cover of scripts, Sunday Morning Dance Parties, email updates, and so on…
• Choose a day each week that is a theme day that everyone can dress up for (we chose Sundays).  Our default theme was always Sweatpants Sunday, but we also had Sunny Sunday (everyone wore beach clothes), Sparkle Sunday, Superhero Sunday, and Ugly Sweater Sunday.  It was a fun way to get everyone excited for a 9 am rehearsal!
• Get everyone involved in social media.  Many of the kids have Instagram accounts, and would upload photos with the hashtag #okpeterpan.  It was fun to see rehearsals through the eyes of the actors!
• If you are doing a “show in a box” with a CD accompaniment instead of a live band, always always ALWAYS have a backup CD (or even two).  During one of our performances, the CD started skipping during a song.  Thankfully, the actors just kept singing and finished the song a cappella!  I was so proud of them!
• Let your young actors know that they need to wear appropriate undergarments for changing costumes.  Unfortunately at OKTC, there are not separate dressing rooms for the boys and girls, so to preserve everyone’s modesty, we make it a rule that everyone needs to have a set of underclothes (such as a tank top and booty shorts or leotard for girls, and a t-shirt and shorts for boys) for quick costume changes.
• If you have two shows in one day, suggest that your actors stay at the theatre between shows and spend time together.  I brought movies for everyone to watch (such as Peter Pan, of course, as well as Tangled and Lilo & Stitch) so the kids could relax and not run around and wear themselves out.
• If your show closes on a matinee, plan a group outing as a final cast party.  We took the Peter Pan cast to see LYTE at the Palace‘s production of Disney’s Alice in Wonderland Jr.  It’s always great to support other theatre groups, and it was a fun way for our cast to spend some more time together!