Meet our Peter Pan: Jason Battersby

We are delighted to welcome Jason Battersby to our stage as Peter Pan in this year’s YTR panto! All New Adventures of Peter Pan is Jason’s first pantomime but he’s no stranger to the character of Peter, having played the Lead Shadow in the play Wendy and Peter at Leeds Playhouse last Christmas.

And what does the ever-youthful Peter and his inseparable shadow do? Why fly, of course. Jason’s ‘flight experience’ is flying through the air with the greatest of ease across the Leeds stage as he shadowed the ever-boyish Peter.

What flights of imagination Jason will experience in the Paul Hendy-scripted York pantomime have yet to be revealed but one thing is certain – Jason will take to the air.

Flying lessons for the Playhouse show were useful training for taking to the air as Peter, although this leads to him wondering if the pantomime will be working with single-line or double-line flying. Whichever system is used at York , he says the key thing is the flying harness you wear. “The harness can be restricting. When you rehearse you have all these ideas of what you want to do but then you put the harness on and realise you can’t do them. It can be painful too if you don’t quite put it on the right way,” he explains.

Before last year’s appearance Jason hadn’t read J M Barrie’s book or watched the Disney film. He researched Peter and his creator J. M.Barrie for the Leeds production, including exploring the parallels between the character and the writer’s own life.

The Shadows at Leeds were used to represent the many facets of Peter’s complex personality. Cocky, childish, curious, naive … some of the words Jason uses to describe Peter, the boy who never grows up. He’s excited to be playing this fly-by-night (and matinees too) saying: “Pantomime is perfect for telling Peter’s story because he never stops playing. It’s going to be wonderful to bring that to family audiences and have fun with it.”

Like Peter, there are many sides to Jason – actor, dancer, singer, songwriter and music producer. And he’s still only 22. The variety of his work is reflected in a CV that includes childhood roles in Macbeth , The Nutcracker and Waiting for Godot with Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart, plus numerous productions for Youth Music Theatre UK and National Youth Music Theatre (including Whistle Down the Wind performed in the presence of Prince Edward).

He’s spent this past summer appearing in the musical Crazy for You at Chichester Festival Theatre. While York marks his pantomime debut he appeared as a youngster in Santa Claus the Musical which had pantomime-ish elements to it. He was 7 when he did that show, having started ballet classes some years before. Two years later he was training with the Royal Ballet School.

At 11 he faced a difficult decision. “You have to decide at quite an early age if you want to be a ballet dancer and continue with that training,” he recalls. “I thought ‘yes, it’s something I enjoy’ but I’d never really wanted to focus on one specific aspect of performance’.

Ballet was left behind in favour of acting and musical theatre. His interest in making his own music arose from young friendships, explaining: “At school I had a bunch of friends who did music and I was one of the boys in my school who could sing. Then I found I appreciated watching them write music and dove into that myself. I’ve always found writing your own songs very therapeutic. I feel as if I write them for myself and if other people listen that’s fine.

“Music for me is quite grounding. Communication for me has always been a little bit difficult and there’s something about writing lyrics I really like. Pop songs get right down to the root of what you say. I really enjoy being producing music where I am the creative force behind it, with no outside influence.”

As for ambitions, Jason recalls as a young performer often being asked that same question, “What’s  your dream role?” He had a “really stupid” answer he used to fall back on – “It’s anything I get paid for”. Nowadays he takes the question more seriously. “In this industry it’s great to have ambitions and dreams but it’s far more important to be realistic and know that as actors we are not constantly working,” he says.

Book your tickets now for All New Adventures of Peter Pan – here at YTR from December 2 to January 2.