The Displaced

Posted by DCA Theater on August 20, 2010 in July-December 2010 Season, INCUBATOR Series: Thirteen Pocket

by Anthony Nikolchev, playwright for The Displaced script as part of XIII Pocket Incubator

I wrote The Displaced - starting writing it - in 2005. Since then, the play has taken many turns, developed with new characters and new ideas, while, simultaneously, I have changed as well. I just returned to Chicago and its exciting theatre scene after 14 months of doing my own searching for theatrical growth abroad, mainly in Wroclaw, Poland.  During that time, I was inundated with many different forms of theatre. Sure, there is still the ever present get-audiences-in-seats more standard idea of productions, but Poland stands out in its willingness and enthusiasm to explore the unknown in theatrical expression.

This exploration manifests in a form encouraged by a master of experimental, laboratory theatre - Jerzy Grotowski. His is not a method, nor a style that can be emulated, but rather a way to approach the work for the theatre creators. That being a rigorously disciplined focus on what the actor is capable of. It is asking that question, “What IS the actor capable of?” How does one find that out? Thus the naming of his and his followers’ theatre as “experimental.” Like scientists experimenting in a lab. Also: Laboratory theatre. It can take years to find the way that a certain text must be read, or a movement be performed that makes the creator and the audience understand what truth is. So for me to be getting more and more addicted to this line of questioning over the last 14 months makes it a challenge for me to enter a play that I starting writing 5 years ago. How to go back?

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8.18.10

Posted by DCA Theater on August 20, 2010 in July-December 2010 Season, INCUBATOR Series: Thirteen Pocket

by Jeff Phillips, playwright for Bosto script as part of XIII Pocket Incubator

Anthony Nikolchev is back from Poland, and this week we’ve begun work-shopping his play The Displaced, which he started several years ago and has since gone through several drafts. It’s been exciting to play with, as there’s not that many science fiction plays out there, at least that I’m aware of. Set in 2063 it follows the development of “the method” and examines complexities in class struggle and ethics in scientific solutions to over population. Monday marked the first day of jumping into The Displaced and Anthony was able to come back Tuesday with another draft to examine. One of Anthony’s big focuses on the outset was using text as a place to start work rather than set work.  And it’s clear ensemble is a huge component to him in creating a work, in creating a world on the stage. In the piece technology is such a part of the world, that it becomes not a bridge to a communal disconnect but is the pulse of human living, attempt to usurp all human variable. In an age of iPads and BlackBerrys, constant electrical distractions, its refreshing to reflect on that and put on its feet a commentary, a satire, that can be communicated through a medium which I’d like to think is the best medium for such a theme…the gathering of a cast and audience, a community, in a dark theatre, with perhaps minimal technology needed for the presentation.

Bosto update - the script has continued to grow. Various questions and ideas posed during the first week of work-shopping have “sprouted” into new pockets of story and stakes for each character in the Bosto environment. I’m excited to bring it back to the table.

Evolution

Posted by DCA Theater on August 13, 2010 in July-December 2010 Season, INCUBATOR Series: Thirteen Pocket

by Jeff Phillips, playwright for Bosto script as part of XIII Pocket Incubator

Stephen’s piece has continued to flesh out over the course of this week.  And it’s exciting to see that layered atop a work in progress dating back to 2003.  On of the night’s he had noticed, tucked away inside the sleeve of a tattered paperback novel he had picked up to read on the way in, a faded flyer promoting one of the very first read through’s of Cash back at Roosevelt University.  The common thread and overall picture has been the major focus of the week thus far.  New concepts of how the music plays within the space have emerged, as well as exploring the music’s relationship with time.  Being of vignette nature, there are a handful of characters that could be linked, perhaps not in a concrete fashion, but in fine subtlety.  Grush-town we all joked when it was alluded that the world of these characters could all perhaps exist in one small town, like a darkened Johnny Cash infused homage to an Our Town.  Perhaps several new scenes may emerge in the world of Cash over the course of the workshop.  Began several years in reaction to Johnny Cash’s death, the original draft banged out in a short amount of time, as Heath Cordts pointed out “like a eulogy.”  Naturally, like any reflection on a person’s life and work, Cash continues to evolve and take on new layers.

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Play development

Posted by DCA Theater on August 13, 2010 in July-December 2010 Season, INCUBATOR Series: Thirteen Pocket

by Stephen Grush, playwright for Cash script and Artistic Director of XIII Pocket

I think that there’s something very callous about a play’s development that’s a bit hard to describe.  In order for a play to be good, and in order for it to stand on it’s own, there has to be so much cutting and killing… at least for me there is.  Some people may be lucky enough to get it right the first time, but I’m not one of those people, and when I go in to really work out the kinks, not much survives the process.

Draft after draft trying to find out what it is exactly that you’re trying to say through these people, you realize that nothing is sacred, and your attachment to a certain line, or even an entire character or scene could be tested at any second.  I really do believe that it’s just as healthy for an artist to be deleting almost as much of his work, as he’s creating.

When you demand more work from yourself the value of the piece thrives.  And plays are a lot of work.  But when a good team has your back it can make the process just a little less hectic…  hopefully some of you can come out for our reading at the end of the month and see for yourselves.

Start of 2nd week

Posted by DCA Theater on August 10, 2010 in July-December 2010 Season, INCUBATOR Series: Thirteen Pocket

by Jeff Phillips, playwright for Bosto script as part of XIII Pocket Incubator

We’re entering into our second week at the DCA.  We’ve put a wrap for now on discussing Bosto.  I’ve spent a good chunk of the day re-working the Bosto text, starting with the ending to tighten that up and earn my way to stronger twist, something more effective.  I feel by starting with a more compelling end, and establishing that clarity in my mind I can back track and re-build the progression of the events and pace the whole of it more effectively, stringing information to truly drive the economic themes forward.  Today we began looking at Stephen Louis Grush’s Cash. This has been Stephen’s baby for several years, and it shows.  On its 17th draft it is already highly textured.  Similar to our initial approach to Bosto we spent the day reading the text aloud and discussing.  Being an experiment in the re-defining of the American musical, we also listened to bits of Johnny Cash to paint the inspiration behind each vignette.

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