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Jessica Davis-Irons
Jessica Davis-Irons is the Artistic Director of AndHow! Theater Company and one of its founders.
In July AndHow! will be presenting two plays in a garden setting for children and adults, and it will be free. Could you tell us a bit more about this and how the company became involved with this project?
I used to be the associate artistic director of adobe theatre company - I n the fall of 2003, one of the garden representatives contacted adobe about finding a group that had a play to be performed in the garden during the summer. While it wasn't the right fit for adobe, Andhow! had just done a reading of a play called Watersheerie>/i> by John Richard Thompson. Watersheerie is basically a love letter to A Midsummer Nights Dream, and begged to be performed outside in a garden...so that's how the match was initially made.
Then we did Watersheerie last July, and had a blast. We chose to perform throughout the garden, and have the audience follow us around (it's not a Huge space, so often that just means turning of a head, or moving five steps to the right to see around a rose bush).
Rehearsals felt like playing pretend when you are little. Running around a garden, getting sun kissed and being tired from a day outside is a very different rehearsal process than being in a rehearsal room for four hours. It was a return to childhood and filled me with joy every day. There were some kids who were around for the rehearsal process, and they definitely told me what they were thinking when they were thinking it, regardless of whether their advice had been solicited. More often than not, I listened to them. Once performances started, the actors would talk to the kids in the audience, and the kids would come right up to the actors, play on the set, and blocking had to be changed each night.
The audience would triple over the course of a performance, just from people walking in off the street. We had face painting and a bubble blower who paid people a nickel to make a wish and blow a bubble - it was magical. So magical that we decided to have our playwrights write specifically for the garden environment.
This spring a very generous Nic from Starbright Floral Designs hosted a reading series in his flower shop on 28th street, where we presented four readings of new plays written for the garden. This summer we'll present two: A Lightening Of Fireflies by John-Richard Thompson directed by Erin Quinn Purcell (July 7-16 Thur-Sat @ 7pm), and You Can Fish All You Want But The Sea Always Wins In The End by Brian PJ Cronin directed by Arthur Aulisi (July 21-30 Thur-Sat @ 7pm).
I'm very happy to see these collaborators working together
- they all loved the garden environment and community last
summer - it'll be fun to see what comes up this summer.
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