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| - The play's title character is a boy who does not grow up. He lives on the island of Never Land where he is the leader of a group of other boys known as the Lost Boys. He is able to fly and has many adventures. Peter Pan often flies to London. He stops outside the window of the bedroom that Wendy Darling shares with her younger brothers John and Michael to listen to the stories that their mother tells them. He goes inside their bedroom one evening and leaves his shadow behind. When Peter returns to retrieve the shadow, he accidentally wakes up Wendy. When Wendy tells Peter Pan that she knows lots of stories, he asks her to come back to Never Land with him. She agrees to go on the condition that her brothers can go with her. As well as Peter Pan and the Lost Boys, Never Land is home to fairies, mermaids, a tribe of Native Americans led by the chief Great Big Little Panther and his daughter Tiger Lily, wild animals and a pirate crew led by the fearsome Captain Hook. In Never Land, Wendy acts as mother to the Lost Boys, Peter Pan and her own brothers John and Michael. Wendy, John and Michael live happily in Never Land for some time. When Peter Pan leads them to believe that their parents have forgotten about them, however, Wendy, John and Michael decide that it is time to return home. J.M. Barrie wrote a sequel to Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up in the form of the one-act play When Wendy Grew Up - An Afterthought, which was first performed in 1908. Barrie adapted both plays into the novel Peter and Wendy, which was first published in 1911. Many people are likely to be offended by the manner in which Native Americans are depicted in Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up as J.M. Barrie originally wrote it. The Native American characters are referred to as "Redskins" and "Piccaninnies". They communicate with each other in grunts and pidgin English and call Peter Pan the "Great White Father". In modern productions of the play, especially ones in North America, steps may be taken to avoid presenting characters who are racist stereotypes. For example, when the British director Tim Carroll staged the play in Stratford, Ontario, Canada in 2010, he chose to change Tiger Lily's tribe into a tribe of Amazons, the warrior women from Greek mythology. Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up is now rarely performed in Britain as Barrie originally wrote it. Pantomimes based on the Peter Pan story are, however, now frequently performed in theaters across the United Kingdom by both amateur and professional companies at Christmastime and at the start of the New Year. J.M. Barrie's original play is not often performed in the United States nowadays either, the 1954 musical Peter Pan by Mark Charlap, Jule Styne, Betty Conden and Adolph Green having overtaken it in popularity in that country. There have been numerous adaptations of Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up and Peter and Wendy to other media. In addition to traditional British pantomimes and stage musicals, these adaptations include radio dramas, video games, comic books and graphic novels. Other authors have written novels, both authorized and unauthorized, which serve as sequels or prequels to the story of Peter Pan. The first screen adaptation of the Peter Pan story, the American silent movie Peter Pan, was released in 1924. Numerous film and television adaptations of the story have been produced since then in the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, Australia and Japan. The best-known movie versions of the story are the 1953 Walt Disney animated film Peter Pan, the 1991 Steven Spielberg film Hook (starring Robin Williams as an adult Peter Pan and Dustin Hoffman as Captain Hook), the 2003 American-British-Australian film Peter Pan (starring Jeremy Sumpter as Peter Pan and Jason Isaacs as Captain Hook) and the 2015 prequel Pan (starring Levi Miller as Peter, Garrett Hedlund as Hook and Hugh Jackman as Blackbeard the pirate).
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