Arturo Hilario
El Observador
Peter Pan has been a mainstay in folklore for more than a hundred years, and ever since it was adapted by Disney into the green tunic and tights combo most associated with the titular character, his story has resonated with countless generations in popular culture.
Known for his larger-than-life attitude and adventurous spirit, the child who can never grow up is associated with freedom, everlasting youth, and pixie dust (by way of the Tinker Bell). Originally written by J. M. Barrie and first appearing in 1902, Pan has gone through many changes while retaining that youthful and adventurous ethos.
In 2024 Peter Pan has returned to the stage musical in an updated form, and with it comes a reworking of the harmful stereotypes and a better interpretation of the best aspects that made the original tale so intriguing and timeless. Playwright Larissa FastHorse, an Indigenous creative, is the person who was tasked in bringing Peter Pan into the current times, all while keeping its narrative voice and adding realistic depictions of the native people the J.M. Barrie included in his writings but that are misrepresented by alternative voices unrelated to the people themselves.
A new generation will be seeing the show with refreshed eyes, and helping along in bringing advocacy and awareness to the world of Peter Pan for modern audiences is actress and musician Raye Zaragoza, a musician of Indigenous, Mexican and Japanese heritage whose music career has been her main body of work. She describes her music as political folk music, coming from a history of artists using the folk sound to protest and bring awareness to issues of the world.
Although Zaragoza’s main output is music, she does have a background in the performing arts and when the chance arose to be part of a special rewriting of Peter Pan, one that would be taking out the harmful stereotypes of indigenous people, like that of her character of Tiger Lily, she jumped to the opportunity to be part of the project and to give a native voice to the story which desperately needed one.
Recently Zaragoza spoke with us about that very opportunity, about her political folk music and what it means to be able to break barriers by being able to properly represent her own mixed background, as well as why it’s important to push the boundaries and bring accuracy to different perspectives, from music to politics to a 70-year-old musical about a boy who can fly and never wants to grow up.
Peter Pan runs from June 25-30, 2024, at the San Jose Center for the Performing Arts. Info and tickets are available at broadwaysanjose.com/shows/peter-pan/.
So to start off, I wanted to know what came first in your background, the singing or the acting, and how did you basically start in the performing arts?
So really, what came first for me was dancing. When I was a little kid, I did dance every day and was doing dance recitals ever since I was five years old. And I was always following in the footsteps of my sister, who was a dancer as well. And then from dance, I got into musical theater, and I was doing musical theater for my whole childhood.
When I was a teenager, I started writing songs and playing guitar, and so that pretty much set me on the path of what I’ve been doing for the past 12 years, which is being a singer-songwriter and singing and touring and all over the world and playing my songs with my guitar. And then it wasn’t until I got this audition for Peter Pan, because I know Playwright Larissa FastHorse and I really admire her work, that I really considered what it would be like to explore doing theater again and build that repertoire and that skill set, because I would love to write a musical one day. And that’s what landed me where I am now here doing the show. And so it’s been a really amazing full circle moment because I grew up doing theater and now I’m back doing theater. It’s really fun. It’s really exciting.
“It’s really my greatest passion to open the door for other diverse artists and to continue on this legacy of bringing down this glass ceiling that has kept women and people of color away from the limelight.”
So can you talk a little bit about the music aspect of your work? Because that’s what you’ve been doing for most of your career, and how do you define political folk music and what you are trying to say with your work?
I released an album in 2017 called Fight For You, and it was my first introduction to releasing a body of work that was recognized as being a political album. And the record was written around the time of the Standing Rock occupation, the protest there, and I was really passionate, and I am really passionate about environmental and Indigenous rights.
And so I’ve always just really felt like music is a really important way to start conversations, start awareness, and tell stories. And as someone who’s of mixed identity, being Indigenous, also an immigrant on my mom’s side, first generation on my mom’s side, it’s just been really important to me to tell stories and try to open minds. And it feels like, especially in 2016, we were in a really tumultuous time, politically. And I felt like as a storyteller, I really wanted to play a part in using storytelling as a way to open minds and hearts and for people to understand the experience of people of color in America. And so that’s pretty much what started me on this path.
So with folk music, in the past, much like Broadway, the mainstream has largely been dominated by white performers and both things, like what you do in your work and what you see within Broadway now, the larger roles, you see that changing and diversifying. And in your position, how do you feel about this idea of being able to, in some ways, reclaim these art forms, these works, and show that it is a diverse place where you can be included?
It’s really my greatest passion to open the door for other diverse artists and to continue on this legacy of bringing down this glass ceiling that has kept women and people of color away from the limelight. And for so often, too, it’s been like [this]. Even with Peter Pan, it’s like, originally this was a very racist stereotype of an Indigenous girl being told by the White perspective. But now, finally, we have an Indigenous voice, Larissa FastHorse, rewriting this story from the native perspective and really empowering the native characters.
That’s so exciting, and I want to be a part of that wave. I want to be a part of that change as an artist and as a performer, because I really hope that in generations to come, people will remember Larissa FastHorse, remember me, as people who really banged down that door when it felt really hard. And I’m sure it was even harder 10, 20, 30 years ago. And so I’m definitely someone who takes a lot of pride in being a changemaker and being someone who’s unafraid to stand up against discrimination and try to fight that wave so that it could be easier for generations to come.
And I love to make a statement, and I love to talk about what I think needs to change in the world. And I love being a part of something that’s new and exciting, like Peter Pan, where there’s finally diverse voices involved. And so it’s the best feeling. It’s really great.
With this revamped version of Peter Pan, can you touch on how it might differ from what people remember about Peter Pan and how you worked with Larissa and shaping this version of the character of Tiger Lily?
I think it’s so great about this version of Peter Pan is that it still has all of the nostalgia and the things that everyone knows and loves about Peter Pan. It’s still all the amazing magical parts of Peter Pan that we know and that are still there. The only parts that have really shifted are the parts that needed to be brought up 2024. The family is a lot more modern now. It’s a very diverse family. The tribe is actually very diverse itself. There’s people from all different parts of the world represented, not only people Indigenous to North America, but Indigenous to all around the world. So we have so many different people in our tribe. Our costumes all reflect our own personal ancient backgrounds and so it’s really amazing.
I think people, when they come see the show, it’s going to feel both nostalgic and new. And then for children who have never seen Peter Pan, they’re not going to know it any other way, and that’s so exciting. And I think those people are going to love it. I think now when you see it, it just all makes sense.
It doesn’t really feel like things have changed. In my opinion, it just feels like things have locked into place.
And going off of that, can you tell me overall how this experience of working on Peter Pan has affected you? And I guess touching back to when you first saw Peter Pan and being able to do this full circle movement in terms of being able to reintroduce audiences to this version?
Yeah, it’s interesting. When I was seven years old, I auditioned for one of the Peter Pan remakes. I think it was in the late ’90s, or early 2000s. And I was auditioning to play Tiger Lily, and they just wanted me to laugh. They were like, “just giggle”, all the while, like these boys are playing jokes on me or everything.
And that was the whole audition. And now, I get to add so much more than just giggle. And that’s so exciting, and so it absolutely has been a full circle moment for me. And I have a lot of passion in recreating things that were once problematic and making them better. I really think that that’s exciting. And I love original content. I also love recreating old content that was previously harmful. Let’s make it better. I love how we’ve done that with Peter Pan, and I love doing that with folk music. Folk music is absolutely a genre that historically, in recent history, has been dominated by mostly white artists, even though folk music originates with people of color.
The genre, folk and country music has been absolutely a lot of white artists, and now it’s been shifting. And I just love the opportunity to get to shift that narrative and be a part of that. And people ask me, “Hey, you’re the only person of color on this bill, or one of the only.” And I’m like, “Yeah, I want to create change.” And so I’m excited to get to recreate something that maybe was once unexpected. So, yeah, it is very full circle.
On that note, we’re seeing more artists, like rappers for example, that are going into blending country music and folk music with hip-hop. It’s all like this merging identity there.
Yeah! It’s this reclamation. It’s like, yeah, I feel like cowboys and things in my country, culture has been known as white culture for so long, but really it originated with Black and Brown people and Mexican people, and Mexicans were the original cowboys. And so I’m always giggling to myself when people are like, “Oh, you’re wearing cowboy boots. Is that really authentic to you?” And I’m like, “Hell, yeah, it is!”
I just love to put culture on its head like that and really challenge the way people see American culture, because American culture is really just colonization of Black and Brown culture. And it’s time that we reclaim, and that’s exciting. I love that.
In terms of acting on stage and being a musician, do either of these creative outputs overlap much or does one benefit the other? How did those two disciplines advise or complement each other?
I’m still figuring that out because it’s exciting now that I’ve been doing this show for almost a year and really getting to see how it really shifts my perspective on my music. And I think that’s all coming in real-time, and I’m going to see what song it’s producing and how it affects my singing voice on stage and how it affects my presence.
I think the biggest thing is it’s really shifted the way I perform as a singer-songwriter, and I feel a lot more full-body presence on stage because doing a musical is so much full-body, like dancing and singing and acting. I think it’s really been a good training from my performance aspect. And also, I’m just excited to see what record this time in my life produces and where my brain and my writing goes after this. But it’s all unfolding before me, and I’m curious to see what happens.
Well, that’s very exciting. Imagine if there was a Tiger Lily folk song or something relating to that in the future.
Oh, yeah. That’s definitely on my mind.
And my last question, what do you hope that people take away from seeing this version of Peter Pan?
I hope that people come away from this version feeling more seen, especially young girls of color and Indigenous people and people from all walks of life. I think that originally, Peter Pan probably didn’t represent everyone in a way, so it does now. And so I hope people see it and they feel seen.
