1812 Productions enlists the talents of fellow female Philadelphia actors, writers, producers, directors to present one new production per season, beginning with The Way I Walk.
I know that you know that I know that you know that 1812 Productions, the nation’s only true all comedy theater company, is owned, managed, run, curated, artistic directed and occasionally starred by and with a woman. Its driving force, Jennifer Childs.
Through May 23, however, and going forward for the next several seasons, Childs is opening up her company and going Dutch on that burden, joy what-have-you, with a cohort of fellow Philadelphia women actors, writers, producers, directors and all-around theater makers: Melanie Cotton, Tanaquil Márquez, and Bi Jean Ngo.
Starting with its currently running online and streaming live production The Way I Walk, written via Zoom by the socially distanced quartet, the team will offer one new production fronted by each of the women per season. For example: while Childs’ was the prime motivator behind this month’s poignant comedy, The Way I Walk, Bi Jean Ngo’s own one-woman, self-directed devised theater showcase will run next season.
If you’re wondering if Childs feels a loss of control or a giving up the reigns in her role at 1812 Productions, far from it. “This cohort is about sharing, not relinquishing,” she told me. “I’m not giving up anything.”
Childs and her team of what she called “superhero women” devised the comic concept of The Way I Walk so to show exactly how women walk on their own, present themselves to the world through all the muck of toxic masculinity and female competitiveness.
Courtesy a corporate game-playing exercise with four co-workers looking to team-build, each woman reveals their true self. “Example being, I play the tough old broad who has been around the block, who you can’t tell anything to,” said Childs, as part of an exercise. That is, until it isn’t an exercise and winds up as much of a richly humorous exorcism.
Only 1812 and Jen Childs could make an exorcism of any sort comic.
Images: Mark Gavin
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