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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.

Now, two weeks later we have found the story we want to explore.  As we delved into the process of creating a play, the relevant pieces of our story began to unearth themselves.  We went from just pages and pages of facts to several ideas to a few themes, to one theme to a question which we asked ourselves over and over again: what superhero do we need today?  Answering that question gave us the fuel we needed to piece together what you will see on Monday the 25th!