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Intro

by Camp Freedom! director Vance Smith

For our Incubator we are working on ensemble member Steve Spencer’s play Camp Freedom!.  We are preparing this script for production in the spring.  It opens March 8th at the Athenaeum Theatre.  We are working with the actors that will appear in the spring production.  The designers have been hired, and we already know what the set will look like.  With so many variables more or less locked down, we can now focus solely on the script.  Normally for a production like this we would rehearse 15- 20 hours a week for five weeks, and then open.  But the Incubator lets us try something different.  We will spend three weeks here, reading, staging and discussing while Steve keeps bringing us new pages, which we then read and stage and discuss.  We will break for two weeks while we process the information from the Incubator experience, and then resume with a new draft for four weeks of regular rehearsal before opening.  While I cannot understate the gift of this extra time to rehearse pages we may never even use, the most valuable aspect of the Incubator will be the public reading on Monday, January 26th.  We will have the privilege, in the middle of a rehearsal process, to present what we have so far to an audience not made up of our friends and colleagues and get feedback from them.  Steve knows exactly what he wants to say with this play, and how he wants to say it.  The question now is how clearly and effectively this message is being conveyed.

This is not a revolutionary idea.  Larger theatres routinely present two or more weeks of previews and gather feedback from the audience when preparing even tried and true scripts.  Then they make changes, rehearse all day and preview again that night.  But for a company of our size, the extra cost of space for that kind of process is not an option.  Also, we are not yet able to pay people enough to quit their day jobs so they can come rehearse with us.  So while the audience at the reading will be giving us an opportunity we would not usually have, we also hope to present them with something they don’t usually get to see.  They will be able to sit in on what will be comparable to a run of a new play halfway through the rehearsal process.  And then influence that process by telling us what they think.  And then hopefully come see the completed show five weeks later.  I don’t know of anyone who is doing that.