NOTES FROM THE PLAYWRIGHT
I don’t remember her name, but I do remember that she got on the school bus at the next to the last stop. The bus was almost full at that point and everyone used every inch of their seat hoping this girl would not sit beside them. She was a poor kid, dressed rather shabbily, and sadly, less than attractive. Her thick glasses didn’t help matters, but neither did we. I don’t think any of us meant any harm, it was just a game—one at first she was unaware of. Soon it became blatant and open and cruel. One day, feeling sorry for her, I let her sit beside me. I wish I could say I braved the ridicule that followed but I couldn’t and on subsequent days made sure there was no seat vacant beside me. Not long after that she moved away.
I didn’t base, Night of the Pterodactyls on this incident, but when I set about to write a play about a girl who was ostracized because of her looks, it brought it all back to me. But the play is really about those years that make us, years in which we are trying to find our way in the world learning what is really important. I made an effort to remember my own middle years and the play incorporates many of my obsessions from rock collecting to astronomy to photography. Once I spilled developing fluid all over me and my eyes were swollen shut for a week.
There’s something magical about childhood obsessions and Night of the Pterodactyls focuses on a little girl’s obsession with dinosaurs and how her obsession and her looks, at first keeps friends at a distance. One little boy dares to look at things differently than his peers and so a childhood romance is born.
In the climactic scene in the play, Carly has discovered pterodactyl eggs in her back yard and one of them hatches and a giant pterodactyl flies out over the audience’s heads. This turned out to be a technical challenge. We rigged a pterodactyl on wires and could fly it over the audience’s head but couldn’t get it to fly far enough to disappear in the balcony as planned and the final effect seemed as if it would fizzle. Finally we decided to release the pterodactyl and send it soaring over the audiences heads and at the same time have the lights fade so it disappeared in mid-flight. Then in the few seconds of darkness we pulled the pterodactyl back upstage and out of sight. Every night, when the lights came back up, audience members (many who had ducked) rose and looked to the back of the house to see where the pterodactyl had flown. In their imaginations the pterodactyl had soared right over their heads and disappeared.
Julian Wiles,
Playwright