It’s Your Life / People, Places and Things to do. : A Favorite Production Off the Ground Again

When Amy Griffin soars above the stage in “Peter Pan” at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza this weekend, it will be thanks to a technology developed and supervised by Foy Inventerprises.

Founder Peter Foy has been working with various mechanical flying rigs since he first took to the air as an actor in the 1940 production “Where the Rainbow Ends.” Foy’s company has supplied (and in many cases created) flying rigging for productions ranging from Las Vegas shows to a recent Paula Abdul tour.

But nearly half of Foy’s business comes from productions of “Peter Pan.” Foy, who did the 1954 Broadway original starring Mary Martin, has rigged hundreds of “Peter Pan” productions around the world.

Is “flying” simply maneuvering actors on cables suspended from the ceiling? It is “in the same sense that dancing consists of wearing a pair of special shoes,” says Garry Foy, Peter’s son and chief operating officer of the company.

Using devices such as a floating pulley, Foy’s company flies actors not only in conventional proscenium theaters but in tents, Ice Capades shows and even in England’s Royal Opera House--as many as 19 actors have been in the air at one time.

Even more impressively, perhaps, Foy once flew hefty actor Dom DeLuise for a Los Angeles Music Center Opera production of “Prometheus in the Underworld.”

* The Cabrillo Music Theater production of “Peter Pan” runs through June 25 at Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, 2100 E. Thousand Oaks Blvd. Call 375-6511.