Here it is, the news I’ve neglected to post on my website for months, finally “revealed”. Truth be told, I’ve been talking all about it for months, and word’s been out on Facebook for the last four weeks. But to make it DougOliphant.com official: I’ve started a theatre company. And for music this time, here’s a song from Explosions in the Sky’s very first EP album (‘How Strange, Innocence’) called A Song For Our Fathers.
Drive Theatre Company produces bold American plays that explore what it means to be an American. At the moment, there are only two of us–Tim Koch and I. Tim is another director I met through Directors Lab West when we both were interns in 2010. We stayed in touch, kept up with each other’s professional lives, and one day I approached Tim with the idea of starting a theatre company. On Drive Theatre’s website, I wrote a series of blogs recapping the full history of the company, so if you’re interested, read more there.
There are now several things going on all at once through Drive Theatre and outside of it. With Drive, we’ve launched our first fundraiser through the website IndieGoGo.com and we’re hoping to raise at least $2,500 by April 13th. As of today, March 25th, we’re 52% of the way there and that’s a very promising sign. Every donation counts, so if you support my work and can afford to donate, click this link to check out the fundraiser page.
We’re also doing a new play development series over the next six months where we’ll aim to work with a new playwright each month, rehearse a new play of theirs with actors for several rehearsals and then present a reading, open to the public. It’s a great way for us to stay artistically engaged while helping a playwright prepare their piece for a future full production. Steve Sherman is our first playwright, and we’ll be presenting his play Stained Glass Windows on Sunday, April 15th, 8pm at Moving Arts Hyperion Station. I’ll be directing the workshop with Drive, but the play is set to have its world premiere at Orlando Shakespeare Theatre this September. The story follows David, a college student who’s come home for the weekend to come out to his sister in the hopes of gaining her support before he tells his parents. That event will be the first official Drive Theatre public event, so if you’re interested and want to come see it, it’d be great to have you there!
Later this year, I’ll be directing a play called 44 Plays For 44 Presidents by Andy Bayiates, et al. The play is a part of a national festival where 44+ separate productions of the play will be mounted in theatres across the country. Drive Theatre will be the sole company representing Los Angeles, and that’s a huge honor for us. That will open October 13th and close November 6th–election night. Additionally, we’ll be filming one of the 44 mini-plays in the production–the Richard Nixon play–and that will be a part of an online video that will be released to the world on election night 2012. Each production gets their own president/play to contribute, so you’ll see a wide range of ages/styles/locations from around the country in that compilation video. You can read more about this production on Drive’s In Production page.
That’s all the exciting news with Drive Theatre, but in the last week another job came my way. I’ll be the movement director for AThroughZ Productions‘ Down in the face of God by NYC-based playwright Tim J. Lord. This is the play’s world premiere and will be directed by AThroughZ’s artistic director Caitlin Hart. It is truly epic, as Caitlin described it to me: A contemporary combination of The Bacchae, Lord of the Flies and Antigone. I’m very excited for this, and it will likely be the most challenging movement direction project I’ve worked on to date. We had auditions/callbacks last weekend and I worked with the actors on some ritual movement for a part of the callback. As we approach rehearsals, I’ll be choreographing/inspiring ritual movement, a character summoning thunder/lightning, a character being raped by the gods, a character transforming into a ‘mudworshipper’, finding a way to destroy a bus shelter, throw bodies into a river, and working with each actor on developing the movement vocabulary for their character’s journey in the play. Thrilling, terrifying, exciting, exhausting, but oh so wonderful–it’s projects like this that you learn the most from, either by succeeding brilliantly, or failing miserably. There’s not a lot of room for anything in-between, so with any luck I’ll help shape this production into a wildly theatrical and powerful night of theatre. Opens May 18th and runs for 3 weekends at Studio/Stage in Hollywood.
















