In a first for the Harker Middle School Conservatory, this year’s grades 7-8 fall play, “Ravi & Friends vs The Phantoms of the X-Dimension,” will be a world premiere of a work by an established author. Larry Pontius, a longtime playwright and novelist (under the name Lawrence Allan), was contacted by play director and Harker performing arts teacher Katie Champlin to write the play, inspired heavily by 1980s media he and an entire generation enjoyed as adolescents.
“All the popular media in the 1980s featuring kids all had them going on these dangerous, crazy adventures,” Pontius said, referring to books such as the “Choose Your Own Adventure” series, which inspired the play’s promotional materials. “So it was all grist for the mill, so to speak,” he said. “Add a bit of ‘Goonies,’ a dash of Ray Bradbury, maybe some ‘Stranger Things,’ a scoop of the ‘80s ‘Transformers’ cartoons.”
Pontius added that he aimed to make an age-appropriate story that was somewhat scary, “because it’s OK to be scared, because you can feel stronger on the other side of it.”
Champlin and Pontius first met as students at the Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre in Blue Lake, Calif. “The school focused on commedia[, a form of professional theater originating in Italy during the 16th century], clowning and physical theater. Each week we would, as performers, have to create new work. So Katie and I have a common vocabulary and a love for a certain kind of theater.”
She hit upon the idea of commissioning Pontius a few years ago while searching for plays “that reflect the students we have at Harker, with some flexibility of roles that can be played by any actor,” she said. Having difficulty finding suitable candidates, Champlin reached out to Pontius. “Larry is not only hilarious and collaborative, but he’s also skilled with structure and story,” Champlin said. “Larry pitched a sci-fi/action-adventure story that explores fear, how it shapes us when we’re young and how we confront it. I loved the idea.”
A full draft was ready by the start of this school year, and has since changed significantly due to the turnout at auditions. “We expanded the number of speaking roles significantly during casting,” Champlin said. “We also clarified motivations, raised the stakes in key scenes and adjusted characters to be more gender-flexible. It’s been a really joyful creative process.”
Pontius drew on the experience of having a mixed-race son for the story, which follows the main character, Ravi, as he and his group of friends set out to rescue his big sister after she is kidnapped by interdimensional creatures. While the experience of writing for middle schoolers was new to him, he had previously written adventure stories for large audiences. To fill the gap, “I leaned on what [my son] might be going through and the things that he likes,” he said, “And, yeah, what I liked as a 13-year-old.”
He had a lot of fun writing the creatures of the X-Dimensions (“Why are they here? What are their powers? How do they relate to each other?”) but also greatly enjoyed developing the main character and his friends: “I wanted to give them a real life, real concerns and real relationships. It’s fun to mix a strange world with real people walking around it.”
As Pontius will be in attendance for the premiere, Champlin said she sees this as a unique opportunity for the students to interact with the author of the material they’ll be performing. “As our actors dive deeper into this strange and exciting world…I’ll be collecting their questions for the playwright,” she said. “It’s a rare chance for young actors to ask direct questions about a play’s creation, something you definitely can’t do with Shakespeare.”
Pontius expressed excitement at seeing how Champlin, the cast and crew interpret his writing. “The script is just the beginning. What will the set look like? What will the characters sounds like? And there are a lot of crazy, weird things in this play. I can’t wait to see it come to life. I hope everyone has a good time doing it.”
