Skip to content
Entertainment
Link copied to clipboard

Inquirer Q&A with ... Kevin Glaccum, producing artistic director of Azuka Theatre

What was the biggest difficulty you had to resolve to get your LA/Fringe piece, Kid Simple: A Radio Play in the Flesh, from idea to performance?

Inquirer: What was the biggest difficulty you had to resolve to get your LA/Fringe piece, Kid Simple: A Radio Play in the Flesh, from idea to performance?

Kevin Glaccum: Kid Simple has a cast of seven, live "Foley" sound, projections and period costumes. The biggest difficulty we encountered was coordinating all of these disparate elements and having everything come out okay! Of course, money is always an issue, and cash flow at this time of year can be particularly challenging. We had to do a lot of "robbing Peter to pay Paul" to get this show up, but the end result is always worth it!

Q: Do you expect your work to have legs? Is there life after LA/Fringe, or is most of what is created for the Festival destined to be seen only on the Fringe circuit?

A: Not on our part. Kid Simple is a published play, so there may be other productions, but not related to Azuka Theatre.

Q: What's the primary source of your concept - music, literature, geopolitics, personal experience, global tragedies?

A: Azuka Theatre's mission is to give voice to the people whose stories go unheard. We look for work that celebrates the human spirit, and stories that enable our audiences to feel connected to the actors on stage. Though Kid Simple is about a young girl who invents a machine that can hear the unheard, I think the story speaks to anyone who's created something, put a piece of themselves into it, and had the results not turn out the way they planned.

Q: How much does funding influence your choice of subject? Do you find that fear of losing it dampens the political choices you make?

A: Funding is always a huge issue for a company our size. I'm very cost conscious when selecting work, when it comes to cast size or production values. But we have never steered clear of a play because we thought its subject matter would affect our funding. That said, I've never had a funder question the work we had chosen to produce.

Q: Is having an edge of political, social or community-based change important to your work, or is your sole goal the artistic outcome?

A: The work we do has an inherent social aspect, as we believe all good theater should impact the lives of those who see it. There is no greater testament to the power of live theater than having audiences impacted by a production to the point where they begin to see the world in a different way, where their perception of their environment is fundamentally altered because of what they've seen.

Q: How comfortable are you in expressing your work verbally - to audiences, media, friends?

A: I'm a very verbal person! I would much rather be answering these questions in person!

Q: If you have performed in other Fringes festivals, tell us how Philly's compares.

A: We have never performed in any other festivals, but I've attended the Fringe in both New York and Edinburgh and can proudly say that the Philadelphia Fringe Festival stands with the best of them!

Show Details:

Azuka Theatre

Kid Simple: A Radio Play in the Flesh

7 p.m. Aug. 29-31, Sept. 3-7, Sept. 10-13

The Latvian Society

531 N. 7th St.

Web Links:

Festival show page: http://livearts-fringe.org/2008/details.cfm?id=5687

Artist website: http://www.azukatheatre.org