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Last year, artistic director of 1812 Productions Jen Childs, of Eighth and Federal streets, took a step back and asked her self the same question she has for the past 16 years: “What do people want to see?” What developed was the 2012-13 season of the all-comedy troupe.
“I look at what we’re able to offer, and I want a variety … within an all-comedy format I want a really diverse offering of comedic styles,” Childs said.
Kicking off this fall, Childs and the 1812 team will have a season with a political comedy, a silent neo-vaudevillian film, a play that is collaboration with Drexel University and a musical based on how women use comedy in telling their own stories.
“I’ve been working on it a really long time, working on it a-year-and-a-half. A large part of it is interviews with women in our community, nonperformers, just women in Philadelphia,” Childs said of 50 to 100 discussions with women for the season’s final piece, “It’s My Party.”
“I’ve done six or seven different workshops [with actors for the piece], but it’s pretty all-consuming. All of it folding into a piece eventually is my task for now. Certainly all of it folds into the inspiration, but no one will be playing these women. But with their permission, we will use pieces of what they said.”
The female-inspired work, which was supported by a grant, rounds out the end of the season. However, the group plans to kick off with a bang at the height of election season with “This Is the Week That Is,” an 1812 standard for the past seven years.
“It changes every year and changes then again weekly and sometimes daily to respond to current events,” the 43-year-old said. “The way politics is and the economy, people are aching to laugh about it because if we don’t laugh, we cry. We knew we had to create our own political humor and the energy during the performances — people are right on the edge of their seats, specifically during elections because this is stuff people are fired up about.
“They laugh in a really different way than if we’re making you laugh about love or housework. It’s things people feel very passionately about. It’s a weighted kind of laughter.”
Childs is from Columbus, Ohio, where she began theater because, as she said, “Of course you auditioned for the plays.
“I had done it in high school, but it’s weird because I remember auditioning for the plays in high school and not having a particular passion for it.”
Though she excelled on the stage, she harbored aspirations of becoming a pediatrician until a family trip across the pond realigned her idea of what was possible.
“Growing up in the Midwest and coming from community theater and things like that, I was overseas with my family since my dad had a sabbatical in England and I saw the Royal Shakespeare Co. and it was Kenneth Branagh and Judi Dench performing and I realized people make this their life. This is a way to make a living and it switched [my impression].”
She applied to and attended The University of the Arts where she studied theater and acting. Childs characterized herself as “serious” and suited for drama, but her grandfather, James Childs Sr., saw something else.
“My grandfather — one day when I was home in Ohio visiting after school, I was telling him about all the amazing dramatic roles I said I’d be playing and he said, ‘I don’t know, I just see you going into comedy,’” she said. “I didn’t want to hear it at the time. I was 21 and thought my life very dramatic. He was right.”
Continually cast in comedic roles before she embraced the genre entirely, Childs returned to Philly to work behind the scenes and onstage with the community she found had changed profoundly since she had originally landed at The University of the Arts in 1986.
“I came back in 1991 and the community had really changed. The Arden [Theatre Co.] had started and people were casting more local people,” the Passyunk Square resident said. “I started getting cast here in Philly and was able to make my living as an artist. I could teach a couple classes and perform in plays and I was fine and that was unheard of.”
After building a successful career onstage, Childs and Pete Pryor — her best friend from The University of the Arts — wanted to transition to directing. They approached the Arden, which had built a second stage that was still not fully booked and offered it to them for exhibition of a self-produced work.
“We started just wanting to do one show, but we realized we have a lot more to say than just one thing,” Childs said. “[We thought], ‘What can be said through comedy that you can’t say through drama or what will people be more willing to listen to or more open to?’”
Sixteen seasons later 1812 is still exploring the same mission, with a full lineup of comedy-strewn offerings, updated for a 2012 audience.
“One of the characters I created and still perform is Patsy from South Philadelphia. She has a life of her own and people love her,” she said. “I’m always amazed by the women who work the voting booths that I go to and the amazing stories they have to tell. … They speak in parable. They’ll tell a story that seems to have nothing to do with it, but then they get to the point and they’ve completely answered your question. That’s what Patsy does.”
The 13-year South Philly resident is in love with her neighborhood and clearly uses inspiration from neighbors, when applicable, in her work. For the upcoming season, she hopes audience members, new and old, come out to see what 1812 is serving up.
“It’s affordable theater and, more than affordable, there’s so few places you can go where you know you’re going to laugh,” Childs said. “I always say, everybody in the world wants to make you cry; I just want to make you laugh.”
Contact the South Philly Review at editor@southphillyreview.com.
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