random great idea

Somebody please steal this, but let me be involved in some way.


So I'm talking with Randi Berry of wreckio ensemble, Executive Director of the LIT Fund, just hanging in our fabulous donated office space at NYFA, right in the hipster, beautiful people heart of DUMBO and we're drinking the free coffee and being all cool and righteous because the Fund launched yesterday morning and it seems like we didn't forget anything major, things are launching, as they used to say down at NASA, and we start talking about wreckio's next project.


And Randi says something like, 

"Well, we're supposed to be writing this new thing, but half of us have toddlers now and someone else just got pregnant and..."





And it hits me like a brick tossed from the back of the crowd:


Baby Theater.

You see all these kick-ass women in New York theater who have to take a couple of years off to make sure the little one doesn't climb inside the oven or try to eat a steak knife.  So, organize them and put on a production of King Lear or the Trojan Women or something where you don't have to pay royalties and cast the babies.  It's OK if they can't really talk yet, because the mothers (and fathers if they want to play) do all of the smaller roles and maybe you create a narrator character who can keep the plot moving along.


You do serious design, cool costumes and lighting and then you figure out how to incorporate their favorite toys so they stay interested.  It would be cool if the lighting designer, set designer and running crew also had to be there with their kids.


You rehearse it, not too long or they'll get bored, you perform it around 2 in the afternoon or whenever they're up from their naps and you pitch it to...right?

You pitch it to all of the other mothers who want to do something but have to be with their kids.  And you can have group crowd scenes, so if you show up with your kid, she gets to be onstage too.

Baby Theater.  
Because the Play is the Thing.