Ahoy, outcasts and underdogs!

Next Wednesday the 26th marks the first preview of SHIP! Have you made your reservation yet?

Kevin Glaccum, Producing Artistic Director of Azuka and director of SHIP, sat down last week to talk about what makes SHIP a quintessentially Azuka show, why he’s proud of it being an Azuka New Professionals production, and what audiences hopefully walk away thinking about. You can find the video below, as well as a transcript. (Plus — wondering about that artwork in the background? It’s by the wonderful @scraps_collection on Instagram!)

SHIP runs February 26 - March 15; you can make your Pay What You Decide reservation by clicking right here!

Below is a transcript of the above video, which has been edited and pared down for clarity from the original footage.

“Hi, I’m Kevin Glaccum, I’m the Producing Artistic Director of Azuka Theatre.

SHIP is quintessentially an Azuka show in that it is about outcasts and underdogs, which is what our tagline is. The two protagonists of this play march to the beat of a different drummer. They clearly live a little outside the bounds of what may be considered ‘normal’ — and they’re okay with that, they’re kinda happy out there. And I’ve always been fascinated with that — I relate to that, I think most people do, and so those are the kinds of stories that I like to tell. I love when someone goes to see a play and on the surface of it, it feels like you would have no connection to the characters at all, they feel so outré — but then as the play progresses, you realize of course, they are exactly like you and I. And we understand, once we lose the externals, that the basic humanity underneath is what connects us, and that’s what I strive for.

When we select a season, we don’t normally pick a through line for the season. We have been very lucky in that when we end up selecting three shows that we’re interested in producing and directing, that we find a common denominator that floats through them. And the thing for this season ended up being personal items: items of personal significance that are made into almost talismans, that become greater than they originally were. In Sunset Baby it was letters, and in SHIP it is fingernails. And so that’s what makes it different — it is fingernails, it’s a very odd personal item to be talking about, but there you go — it’s a Doug Williams play.

I read almost anything Doug Williams writes, I ask him to send me anything that he’s working on. Doug’s my favorite playwright, I think he’s an extraordinary writer, and he writes plays that I want to do. As soon as I read it, I knew I wanted to do it.

I’m very proud of New Professionals, this is I believe our 9th year of producing New Professionals. I started it, I was very eager to add a third show to our season, we were only doing two. And I see an enormous amount of theatre in Philadelphia, and I was seeing all of these young actors and designers, putting on their own stuff; some of it was great, some of it wasn’t. But I kept seeing elements of it — that actor is really good, these lights are really great. What if we did a show that could highlight all of those recent college graduates in one production? Give them some more backing than they might normally have on their own, and produce the show, focusing on that — thus helping them launch their careers. And it enabled us to get our third show! People have gone on to win Barrymores that have been in our New Professionals, been nominated for the actual New Professionals production itself for a Barrymore, and have gone onto work all over Philadelphia and around the country actually — so, I’m really very proud of this program.

What I always hope audiences walk away from our shows thinking is that ‘I saw a little bit of myself up on that stage. I saw a little bit of own struggle, my own triumph — my life experience. Reflected and refracted through these rather interesting characters, but the connection is there.’

Come and see SHIP! February 26th to March 15th.”