Vice provost helps ‘Peter Pan’ take flight in community theater

Zach Kelehear, EdD, can add another item to his list of accomplishments over his professional career: playwright.

The vice provost for Instruction and Innovation has been in academia for more than 40 years and at Augusta University for the past 10, first serving as dean of the College of Education and Human Development, before his current role. He wrote an updated version of “Peter Pan” for the Augusta Jr. Players, who will perform the show during the week of March 24 for area schools before opening to the public March 28-29 at the Salvation Army Kroc Center.

Kelehear’s wife, Karen Heid, agreed to direct “Peter Pan” almost two years ago and “voluntold” him to write a new version of it for the stage.

“We’ve been involved with the Augusta Players and Augusta Jr. Players for several years now, and we find great value in that,” Kelehear said. “I try to be a participant in the community, and with Augusta Players, I have done some work in the background. With ‘Peter Pan,’ my wife said that she wanted to do this and she’d like for me to write a different script. The play has been out long enough in the public domain, so we had a little freedom to play with. I’ve updated it to make it more recent and relevant, and I may or may not have mentioned a certain golf tournament in our area.”

As a professor, Kelehear wrote research papers but said he has never done narrative or dialog writing. He has written three books, while also contributing to journals and peer-reviewed journals. He discovered writing dialogue for a play is a “whole different creature.” He admitted he had also never written for visual performance and was on a steep learning curve during the process.

“I did a lot of writing and had to run a stream of consciousness of the story and imagine the transition of the much-beloved story while remaining faithful to the core work,” Kelehear said. “There’s a scattering of some really bad dad jokes, which I’m famously good at.”

Kelehear said he spent roughly four months writing and editing with Heid and Roy Lewis, the artistic director for the Augusta Jr. Players, then spent 20 days aggressively editing the finished product before turning the reins over to them.

“Watching Karen work then coming to know the cast and imagining certain roles was very new to me, and she knew it,” he said. “But they were amazing to work with. I had to learn in a hurry that the story is not merely the words and, in fact, the words are not nearly as important to the story as the visual representation.”

Heid worked at AU for several years then transitioned back to the grade-school classroom before retiring a few years ago. She has directed “Peter Pan” in the past and knew with a limited budget she would have to come up with a creative way to perform it. She recruited Kelehear to write, a task Heid said he was excited about approaching as a new opportunity.

“We collaborated, and I was able to share what could and couldn’t work on stage because, even though it’s great on the page, it might not translate to the stage,” Heid said. “I think he enjoyed the process, but I also think he really enjoys a struggle. I could see him struggling at times, and he would bounce things off of me. The challenge is the part Zach enjoys.”

A longtime educator, Kelehear said the experience took him back to 1982 when he taught eighth graders. He said, during that time, it was a lot of paying attention, figuring out what works and making adjustments on the move.

“There’s a little bit of improvisation to life, and that’s what I felt like I was doing in real-time, watching and observing,” he said. “In this play, we have almost 15 children, but every child has multiple lines. In some plays, the ensembles may or may not have things to say, but their performance matters. I guess it’s the schoolteacher in me, but I said, if they’re going to be on stage, I want them to talk.

“I want them to feel the anxiety, the excitement, the challenge and the growth that comes from speaking in a public way and that their words matter to the story,” he continued. “Again, going back to my teaching, I think our call to action is to say to students, ‘I hear you. Your words matter.’”

 Visit the Augusta Players website to learn more about showtimes.