Final thoughts from Steve

Posted by DCA Theater on February 6, 2009 in January-June 2009 Season, INCUBATOR Series: Black Sheep Productions

by Steve Spencer, playwright

The Incubator series is over.  I miss it.

Man, there’s such a fine line between collaboration and being told you’re wrong.  I walked into this process with a play with no ending.  Oh, it had an ending in the sense that it would eventually crawl to a finish and die in the laps of the audience, but not an ending that worked.  And the twenty pages leading up to it didn’t help matters.  The characters did things for no reason.  There was nothing at stake.  The jokes sucked.  Nothing worked.  I knew it.  Everyone knew it.  But we politely decided not to talk about it.  We jumped into Act I and had so much fun that we easily ignored the unbearable truth:  we had no ending.

Soon, the fun was done.  It was a black day when we finally got around to discussing what everyone knew.  We read Act II.  It was painful.  Suddenly these hilarious actors were revealed as the demons of common sense that they were.  They wanted to know why?  Why would we do this?  Why would we not ____?  Why are you here?  Why?

The other big truth nobody wanted to talk about is that I didn’t know why.  I can’t speak for any other writers, but I have no idea what I’m trying to say.  That’s why it takes so many words.

So.  We collaborated.  Meaning I took everything everyone said as a personal attack and wanted to pack up my pencil and commence drinking.  I took it badly.  Maybe not on the outside, but inside I was mentally poisoning these people.  Then something interesting happened.  I found that the more I was willing to listen to everyone’s ideas, the less homicidal I became.  There seems to be an inverse relationship between personal insecurity and collaboration.  Who knew?  I didn’t.

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The Reading

Posted by DCA Theater on February 5, 2009 in January-June 2009 Season, INCUBATOR Series: Black Sheep Productions

by Vance Smith, director

We performed the staged reading on Monday the 26th.  About 35 people attended.  We passed out feedback forms and asked audience members to stay for a discussion afterwards.  Probably the best news of the evening was the positive response to Scene 6 (formerly Act 2).  That was the part we worked on the most, and based on the reception, it paid off.  There was also a wide consensus that the show works well as a one-act and does not need an intermission.  We received many helpful comments about certain points that are perhaps overstated in the current draft, which means we are exactly where we need to be.  Now that we are confident the ideas Steve wants to convey are clear, he is in an excellent position to streamline this message.  Some parts of the show that did not play as well as I would have hoped will benefit enormously from a quicker pace (hard to do with script in hand and blocking) and the detail work that comes with a full rehearsal process.  It was so informative to watch the show with a group of fresh eyes.  We were also very fortunate to have a diverse audience of people from different ages and backgrounds.  This workshop has made it possible for us to take this project to a new level.  Thanks to all who attended and to everyone at the DCA for their support.  I hope will join us at the Athenaeum in March for the world premiere of Camp Freedom!

CAMP FREEDOM!: Post your review

Posted by DCA Theater on January 26, 2009 in January-June 2009 Season, INCUBATOR Series: Black Sheep Productions

Monday, January 26, 2009
Studio Theater INCUBATOR Series
Presented by Black Sheep Productions

The not too distant future. The economy has crashed. The ecosystem is in ruins. And love is in the air. Jack is the newest resident of FEMA’s relocation & processing center number 4152L. He’s about to be tortured, meet the anarchist woman of his dreams, and maybe, just maybe, murder Dick Cheney. A comedy for the collapse, Camp Freedom! is a new satire from Steve Spencer, the playwright that brought you 2007’s hit Another Day in the Empire.

INCUBATOR is a series designed to support the creation of new work by emerging Chicago theater companies. Utilizing Chicago DCA Theater space and resources, participants explore new projects, develop and refine styles, and share their process with the public during a special showcase event.

Act 2??

Posted by DCA Theater on January 26, 2009 in January-June 2009 Season, INCUBATOR Series: Black Sheep Productions

by Vance Smith, director

I spent about three hours at my desk on Friday re-staging Act 2 and came in to day (Saturday the 23rd) hoping it will work.  And it does!!  Not only does the blocking no longer look terrible, but certain sections of the script actually make more sense now that they have been staged properly.  Huh.  It took all day to get it right, but now we are in very good shape for the reading on Monday. 

After all the talk on this blog about Act 2, the future of the intermission is now in question.  The play looks like it will clock in at about 80 minutes without an intermission, so Steve and I have decided to present it on Monday as a one act, and then talk about whether there should be an intermission with the audience.  So while there may still be an Act2 in the future, for now it shall be affectionately referred to as Scene 6.

Week 3

Posted by DCA Theater on January 26, 2009 in January-June 2009 Season, INCUBATOR Series: Black Sheep Productions

by Vance Smith, director

With the structure of Act 2 now in place, I went back to previous drafts, and made a list of lines and ideas cut along the way that I thought perhaps merited another try.  We have a week left in the Incubator, and this is the perfect opportunity for us to take one more shot at some things we were not sure about.  Steve and I met outside of rehearsal and discussed my list and some changes he wanted to make based on Sunday’s run.  The resulting draft will be, minus a few tweaks, the version we present at the reading.  Then we can let the audience help us determine what should stay and what needs to go.  After fine tuning the first act on Wednesday (1-21), we devoted Thursday to tackling the second, which in spite of having come a long way, still needs more work, largely since so much of it is new.  We started running it with the staging, and two things quickly became apparent: first that some of the new material was not really resonating with the performers yet, and second that the blocking was really really bad.  I staged this section organically with the actors last week, partly because I had myself only just received the new draft.  But as it turns out, there are simply too many people onstage and too many things happening for that to be successful.  I would have to go home and figure this out by myself.  So we stopped the work-through, sat back down at the table and had a discussion with the actors about the new material, and then broke for the night.