Jeff’s final blog

Posted by DCA Theater on February 1, 2010 in January-June 2010 Season, INCUBATOR Series: Wishbone Theatre Collective

by Jeff McLaren, Wishbone company member and Director of Spandex

DCA Theater’s INCUBATOR process was a wonderful opportunity for Wishbone.  I’ve learned to never underestimate the potential power of a vacant room, in this case DCA’s beautiful Studio Theater. Add an inspiration, a few energetic actors, someone to lead, and you’ve got yourself a play waiting to write itself, so to speak.  But is that really all it takes?  Even with an abundance of ideas to fulfill concept, what happens if the play doesn’t write itself?

It’s an intriguing decision to make before commencing an ensemble-developed piece whether to include a dedicated playwright.  On one hand, you are entrusting just one person to capture the essence of all the ensemble’s research, discussions and improvisational efforts and convert it into a play that ideally the entire group believes in.  On the other hand, without a playwright to absorb and filter what is created in rehearsal, whose responsibility then is it to write?  The director’s?

We faced a similar quandary during Spandex.  While we had very fruitful creative process, ultimately and somewhat unexpectedly, the playwriting role came to me (the director) and Laurie Jones (a member of the acting ensemble).  It became necessary for us to consolidate seven different superhero stories and draft the first three scenes.  With feedback from the acting ensemble, we tweaked and refined the scenes until we had a script we felt happy to present to an audience.  However, looking to the future with Spandex, I would prefer not moving forward without a dedicated playwright.  If anything, to give more clarity to a very free and open-ended process. 

Jan 24

Posted by DCA Theater on January 25, 2010 in January-June 2010 Season, INCUBATOR Series: Wishbone Theatre Collective

by Kimberly Van Ness, Wishbone Company member and actor in the ensemble for Spandex

Today marked Wishbone’s last rehearsal for the Incubator Project.  To think that we started the month of January with little more than an idea in our heads and now have a definitive focus, characters, and written scenes (as well as a whole lot more information in our heads about the ins and outs of the superhero uni-oh wait, MULTI-verse) is pretty exciting.

When the idea for this show first came up, it stemmed from a desire to know more about the word of superheroes and their connection to society today.  When developing new work, sometimes it’s hard to narrow down the topic enough. Initially we were interested in every single aspect of the superhero world.  How, for example have politics influenced the creation of superheroes and villains?  Should we explore the religious connotations, the idea of a chosen ‘one’ that exist in so many superhero stories?  What parallels can we draw between American comic book superheroes and the superheroes of other countries?  The amount of information we were able to find was staggering and it was a bit overwhelming to think that we would have to narrow down all these bits and bobs of research and find a common theme.  Our story was in that information pile somewhere, we just had to dig it out.

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Jan 23

Posted by DCA Theater on January 25, 2010 in January-June 2010 Season, INCUBATOR Series: Wishbone Theatre Collective

by Kimberly Van Ness, Wishbone Company member and actor in the ensemble for Spandex

With one rehearsal standing between us and the showcase on Monday, it was time to put the shoe leather to the road (or noses to the grindstone or whatever the metaphor is).  On Friday, we spent the better part of the rehearsal just writing, trying to fill in the gaps that our improv explorations had left us with.  For two hours, everyone in the ensemble went to their own little corners (like that Cinderella song, the people version, not the cartoon) and wrote furiously.  For the last hour, everyone shared their pieces and the main throughline of the show started to take place.  From this exercise, we discovered our superhero’s name, the relationship of the characters to the environment and the purpose of the villain.

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January 21

Posted by DCA Theater on January 22, 2010 in January-June 2010 Season, INCUBATOR Series: Wishbone Theatre Collective

by Kimberly Van Ness, Wishbone Company member and actor in the ensemble for Spandex

Hello from the land of Spandex!  The past few rehearsals, we have been using improv to help us explore themes that were discovered during our research.  During these explorations, we’ve stumbled across a number of superheroes whose powers are…shall we say, less than awe-inspiring. One of our ensemble members is particularly adept at inventing totally whacked out and bizarre characters.  I’ve been keeping a list of some of my favorites:

1. Fondant Fred: has the ability to shoot fondant from his fingers and comes into children’s rooms and brings them sweets (yes, it is as creepy as it sounds).

2. The Slippery Dwarf: A dwarf whose bottom half is actually a fish, making him half dwarf, half mermaid (merman?). He has slime come out his pores, thus accounting for the ‘slippery’ part of the ‘slippery dwarf’. We are not exactly sure what he does other than being…slippery.

3. Groaning Willard: A corn farmer who…groans, and doesn’t wear a shirt. I don’t actually remember what his power was…but it was equally outrageous as the corn farming part.

4. A horse….that can turn into…wait for it….a PLANT!

As with all improv, for every nugget we find that we can use, there are ten nuggets that are just good for a laugh and then are filed quietly away.  Now that we have an idea of where we want this story to take us, we have to keep soldiering on to flesh out our characters, conflict and resolution!  Stay tuned as we take you through the final few rehearsals before our presentation on Monday 1/25!

January 13

Posted by DCA Theater on January 17, 2010 in January-June 2010 Season, INCUBATOR Series: Wishbone Theatre Collective

by Kimberly Van Ness, Wishbone Company member and actor in the ensemble for Spandex

Tuesday marked our third meeting for Spandex wherein we continued Mondays discussion about the life and times of superheroes.

(Some tidbits from Monday’s discussion that were not included in the previous post: Sam’s truly epic cataloguing of the 35 most memorable comic book villains of which we all thought the Scarlet Witch was pretty awesome, an acapella rendition of the ‘Muppet Babies’ theme song, and me getting all up in arms about the apparent need for all female superheroes to have the BMI of toothpicks until Brandon explained that as crime fighters, they probably should be in relatively good shape.)

We started off the meeting with a little historical recap from Laurie about one of the earliest superheroes, Mandrake the Magician who, as you may be surprised to find out, was NOT shaped like one of those crying baby root things in Harry Potter but rather like a magician who took his mustache styling advice from Rhett Butler. Mandrake the Magician’s power was to ‘gesture hypnotically’ and cause his subjects to see illusions.

(Fancy, but I think controlling metal is still my favorite power so far…)

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