The following article reflects corrections made on November 19 at 11:30 a.m.
Barnacles, oysters, mermaids, and a tiny buccaneer.
All of these will be featured Saturday in Company Carolina and Pauper Players’ joint production of “Peggy the Pint-Sized Pirate.”
From a book by D.M. Larson, the children’s musical was adapted by Edgar Harrell, a Company Carolina member, and Clare Shaffer, producer for Company Carolina. The duo wrote the production’s music and lyrics, and Shaffer will direct the show.
The musical will be performed at two area elementary schools on Friday and Monday.
The site director of an after-school program at Ephesus Elementary School commissioned the performance from Shaffer.
“I had the time to do it and the will to do it so I took it on,” Shaffer said.
Despite this younger audience, musical director Ben Boecker said he approached the music no differently than he would as the executive production director for Pauper.
“I base my approach in music directing on the material, and the material is based on the audience,” Boecker said.
The musical tells the story of a “vertically-challenged” Peggy who, through rescuing her friends from a sea monster, proves she is worthy of being a pirate.
Jordan Imbrey, an actor in the musical, will play the part of Scummy, the extremely fearful pirate sidekick.
As a media studies major, he said that performing in a children’s musical is different from any artistic work he’s done before.
“I usually work with film where you work hard for subtlety in gestures and expressions, but in this everything’s big and over the top with your emotions out on your sleeve,” he said.
Shaffer said that as director, she stresses the importance of exaggerating acting style to appeal to children.
“There is no subtlety,” she said. “If someone makes a face of disgust, we tell them to make it the most ridiculous face of disgust possible.”
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