'I Will Not Go Gently': A one woman show on the glory of rock and roll

Jennifer Childs, longtime artistic director for 1812 Productions, debuts Tuesday night in her self-penned, one-woman show I Will Not Go Gently at Plays & Players Theatre. Childs plays multiple roles in a musical tale of ageism, egoism, comebacks, and rock and roll. Three characters - a podcasting fan-mom, a faded television heroine, and a tech-centric tween - try to grab for glory they may or may not ever have had.

These characters all bear some connection to Sierra Mist, an imaginary '70s/'80s female rocker icon whose music and image (Childs says) are influenced by Liz Phair, with touches of Joan Jett and Madonna. Worried about obscurity and age, Sierra goes for a hard, desperate comeback: It's a story echoed countless times in pop lore.

Sierra also has a bad case of digital gap. "I don't know if Sierra Mist knows much about downloading," Childs says in the recording booth at Buckeye Recording Studios on South Eighth Street.

For I Will Not Go Gently, Childs (who has directed herself often) tabbed Barrymore-winning director Harriet Power to guide the ship. She also asked longtime 1812 composer Chris Colucci not only to score the show, but to also play, produce, and co-write songs with Childs as Sierra for a CD. It's now on sale at all usual the outlets - and for download!

"She knew I loved that music - the girl-punk, Liz Phair thing - even if I hadn't touched making a CD in years," says Colucci, who spent time in the 1990s in Philly rocker Ben Arnold's band. "The sound design is based on the tones of anticipation at a big concert at something such as the Spectrum. When Jen and I decided that we wanted to collaborate on actual tracks, I figured, 'Let's just track the songs, live in the studio, just like olden days.' "

At the moment, Childs and studio owner/engineer Peter Richan are at work on a suggestive track titled "Jack in My Box." "Sierra" does her swaggering best, complete with spraying spittle, although not in the black wig Childs will wear on stage.

Richan reminds us we're standing in what used to be Philly mob lion Chickie Narducci's clubhouse. "When I got this place, I can't tell you all the tales that I heard," Richan says with a laugh between takes of Childs' rocking "Box."

Days later, director Power and Childs are working at 1812's stage/studio space on South Third Street between Wolf and Ritner Streets.

"The music business is not interested in women over 40," says Power, who's recovering from a recent motorcycle accident, and who therefore has had occasion to ponder artists' mortality. "I'm not going gently either, so what do we do with the time we have left?" As an "old rock 'n' roller," Power says that Sierra Mist and her dramatic rise evoke for her a time when albums had liner notes, stars had egos, and music was personal. Childs has, she says, "an artful way of portraying all this."

But is it funny?

Power says Childs is especially good at creating "extreme clown figures" like Sierra who put themselves out there for all the world to see. Childs says she finds humor in Sierra's layers – levels of self-doubt, neediness, and anger - things we all know, in her estimation.

"Sierra is my inner diva," says Childs. "She has an enormous ego, does not understand why the world doesn't exist as it did in the '80s, and has no time to learn it. That's me. I have no idea how to work my computer. I just want to make it go. As a character, she is so ridiculous, she explodes all of our own foibles, anxieties, and panics about getting older. That's funny."

Childs started creating the show last year, when her 47th birthday brought an aha moment. And 1812 itself is having its 20th anniversary soon, so it is a time of benchmarks that has led Childs to mull over life lived versus life to come.

Such questions are at the heart of Sierra Mist's decision not to go gently. "I think we see ourselves in her," Childs says, "especially when we don't think that we do the messy things that we do in the name of aging.

"Trust me," says Childs, "we do them."