Alex Chambers
It was the spring of 2021. Skylar and Simon were living together in Brooklyn. They were out of work. Their housemates were out of work. Everyone in theater was out of work. Skylar said they figured they might as well spend some time writing.
Skylar Fox
And then this idea started to creep at the back of our head, which felt wildly impractical: what if we did a show in our backyard, around a campfire?
Alex Chambers
The pandemic had kept everyone apart for almost a year. They needed a way to get people together.
Skylar Fox
Maybe after being separated for so long there was something exciting about gathering in that way. Something that felt a little like let’s put on a show, childlike, but also a little elemental, where theatre came from, sitting around a fire telling stories.
Alex Chambers
Finding impractical ways of getting together – that’s something they’ve been exploring for a while. Skylar Fox and Simon Henriques are the co-artistic directors of Nightdrive, a theater company in New York, and you’re probably listening in southern Indiana, so I guess I should probably tell you why we’re talking with them now. Skylar and Simon did, in fact, write that play set around a campfire. It’s called The Grown-Ups, and it takes place one night at a summer camp after the campers have gone to bed. They performed it in their backyard in Brooklyn. Then they took it to Pottstown, Pennsylvania. And now it’s coming to Bloomington. Just outside of Bloomington, actually, at The Hundredth Hill Artist Residence and Retreat. It’s the first theatrical production from Constellation Stage and Screen, the organization birthed from Bloomington Playwrights’ Project, Cardinal Stage, and Pigasus Institute.
Skylar Fox
It felt so clear in the height of the pandemic that we could not go back into the world and keep living the exact same way afterwards. And then we had this fear that was in us too that the return into a world where we didn’t have to mask all the time or didn’t have to stay in our homes all the time would be so nostalgic and exciting that we’d want everything to go back to the way that it was.
Alex Chambers
Being a counselor at a summer camp seems like just the right place for a collision of nostalgia and new worlds. It also seems kinda convenient if your play takes place around a campfire. Simon said the setting was convenient, but they found meaning in it, too.
Simon Henriques
I think the emotional themes behind that feeling of you’re not quite old enough to be in charge but for some insane reason you are anyways, lined up really well with the story we were trying to tell.
Alex Chambers
This isn’t their first time doing a production in an unusual format. Previous plays include an immersive alien movie, a haunted rock concert, and a townhall meeting with a pancake breakfast.
Skylar Fox
I often joke that the thing we do is make experimental theater for people who think they hate theater.
Alex Chambers
But they hadn’t sat around a fire with their audience before.
Skylar Fox
It felt so intimate and kind of surprising when the theatrical fireworks of what you’re doing can be a breath, a look, or something you wouldn’t be able to see from the stage. There are so many other senses that are alive. You can smell fire, feel heat, and taste beer and smores.
Simon Henriques
For me performing it feels like the audience and performers are on a team together and it’s really something everyone gets to go through. …We’re all sitting around the fire and figuring out what is going on together.
Alex Chambers
And that, I think, is what’s going on here. It’s about finding new ways to get together to tell a story.
Skylar Fox
We are drawn to plays that are really demanding of us as an audience, that ask us to do more, because we find that audiences are really smart, and really engaged, and show up to theater because they want to be part of something live. And that isn’t to say, “You know, there’s participation, everyone’s going to touch you!” But more to say, there’s something risky and demanding for the audience and actors sitting together in this way. And I also think, doing this specifically where we’re doing it, at Hundredth Hill, with Constellation, is going to be in some ways the most immersive environment you could see the play in, to be at a real former summer camp, under the stars, in the middle of the country, we can’t imagine anything more exciting, or a more exciting place to put this play.
Alex Chambers
We heard from Skylar Fox and Simon Henriques, who cowrote The Grown-Ups. Skylar directed the show, and Simon is one of the cast members. The Grown-Ups runs September 14 through October 1, at The Hundredth Hill. You can find more information at seeconstellation dot org. And if you miss the play, don’t worry. They’re working with Constellation to turn it into a movie as well. For WFIU Arts, I’m Alex Chambers.
