The Rubber Chicken - Ottawa Theatre Challenge

Last Thursday March 27th was World Theatre Day. Our theatre company (Maureen Smith and myself- Let it land theatre), won the Rubber Chicken award for the 8th Annual Ottawa Theatre Challenge hosted by A Company of Fools last week. The Challenge,-- show up at Darcy McGees Pub on Tuesday March 25th at 7:30pm with a newspaper headline and something wrapped. Your company then picks a headline, and a wrapped item and you have 48hrs to write a 5 minute piece of theatre. Our Headline was “There will be blood pressure” and our objects were an empty Tampon box, empty roll of toilet paper, an elastic, an HB Pencil and a note “What would MacGyver do?” Our script was a madcap, wacked out “24” a la Jack Bauer in Lululemon skit in a fitness class.

I am still giggling.

We backed out twice, we went up with scripts in hand, Sarah and Kate were coming, then not coming, so the Barbies were the replacement actresses, once Scott Florence convinced us to just come and read it, then Mo’s kids ran a-moke during rehearsal so we only had two runs at it, then both Sarah and Kate came near showtime, so we didn’t really rehearse any of it at all and the Barbies just became window dressing…..it was all very surreal, funny, and on the fly.

I am certain all the other companies out there are saying “how the hell did they win?”
I’ll be honest and say, I haven’t a clue.

Now, we figure we won because of a few factors:

- we had the fabulous Kate Hurman with us;
- we had great energy, and lets be honest between the 4 of us have probably 80 years of theatre experience ;
- it was funny, and pretty wacked (COME ON- Maureen was doing high kicks and karate chops, and there was a Barbie in a downward dog, on a blue “yoga mat” made out of construction paper, and Kate was "stretching" her boobs) ;
- we were so un-prepared they felt sorry for us.

Or maybe, just maybe, we were the best crew....who knows.

Regardless, we won, the others didn’t. Tits up t’y’all.