The Artistic Core
From Producing Artistic Director Jennifer Childs, October 2021
Some of my favorite productions in 1812 history have been made by gathering a group of artists in a room and playing—improvising, experimenting, writing together—and creating a show that is unique and joyous. For some time I’ve been thinking about how to invite deeper relationships with those artists and how we make space for a larger community of voices on our stage. This prompted the question, “What if the show we make together is not the end product but the beginning of a longer process?”
In early 2021, I co-created The Way I Walk, a virtual work of theatrical comedy, with Melanie Cotton, Bi Jean Ngo, and Tanaquil Márquez. This show was the beginning of our work together as the Artistic Core.
We played around with a lot of names for this group but kept coming back to the Core: a place of strength at the center and the place where the seeds of something new are held. The show also served to launch the larger “The Way I Walk Project,” a commitment from 1812 to develop and produce a work of comedic theater helmed by each of these artists over the coming years. In 2022 we produced Bi’s solo show In Search of the Kitchen Gods as the first show created by a member of the Artistic Core. For the past year and a half, we have been workshopping Tanaquil’s piece, La Otra with plans to produce it in 2025. We will start workshops for Melanie’s piece next season. In the meantime, the Artistic Core is a part of the life of 1812 – Tanaquil also serves as 1812’s Education Director and has directed two iterations of This Is The Week That Is, Bi will be featured in La Otra and Melanie is currently choreographing and Co-Directing this year’s This Is The Week That Is after having been seen in last season’s The Play That Goes Wrong.
The way the four of us walk through the world is very different based on our ages, our races, our cultural heritage, our religions, our life experiences...but the place where all our paths converge is our shared belief in the importance of laughter and joy.
Meet the Core Members
Jennifer Childs (she/her) is a theater maker, a Mom, a comedy history nerd and Co-Founder and Producing Artistic Director of 1812 Productions. For 1812 she has created over 25 original works of theater including To the Moon, The Carols, It’s My Party: The Women and Comedy Project, Cherry Bomb, and the annual political humor show This Is The Week That Is. Among these is also a series of comedic works exploring comedy history and honoring comic legends: The Big Time (vaudeville), Like Crazy Like Wow (1950s nightclub comedy), Something Wonderful Right Away (history of improvisation), Always A Lady (history of women in comedy), Double Down (history of double acts), Our Show of Shows (a tribute to Sid Caesar), and Broads (a tribute to female comics from Mae West to Moms Mabley). Her solo shows, Why I’m Scared of Dance and I Will Not Go Gently, have been performed around the country. Most recently she collaborated with the other Core members to co-create The Way I Walk.
She is the recipient of three Barrymore awards including the 1999 F. Otto Haas Award for an Emerging Theatre Artist. She is also the recipient of two Independence Foundation Fellowships in the Arts and the 2003 University of the Arts Silver Star Outstanding Alumni Award. In addition to the University of the Arts she has also studied at The British American Drama Academy and the School of Physical Theatre in London.
Outside of 1812 Jen has performed, directed, and/or taught at the Arden, the Wilma, the Walnut, Philadelphia Theatre Company, Freedom Theatre, Act II Playhouse, and Cape May Stage among others. She believes that the world needs more comedy and that joy is underrated.
Melanie Cotton (she/her) is an experienced choreographer, dancer, educator and theater artist. Melanie’s performance and creative practice integrates various forms into her work: clown, musical theater, improvisation, voguing, waacking, performative protest, and stepping. Her work as a choreographer and theater artist is uniquely alive with the ingenuity of Hip- Hop culture. From 2004 to 2008 she worked as a principal dancer and contributing choreographer for all female Hip-Hop dance company Montazh PAC. From 2009 until 2014 she was a principal dancer and teaching artist for Rennie Harris: Puremovement dance theater company. Melanie’s performance credits include Bill Irwin’s The Happiness Lecture, 1812 Productions' It’s My Party: The Women and Comedy Project, Walnut Street Theater’s In The Heights, Mash Up Body with Kate Watson-Wallace, Pig Iron’s The Swamp is On, Allan Kaprow’s ‘Chicken’ Reinvented by Alex Da Corte, and most recently 1812 Productions' The Way I Walk. Choreographer credits include Red 40’s The Best Songs in the World, The Arden Theatre’s production of The Legend of Georgia McBride, Lightning Rod Special's The Appointment, and The Bearded Ladies Cabaret Love Notes: A year of no regrets.
As a teaching artist Melanie has taught with The ladies of Hip Hop Festival, 1812 Productions' education program, Philadelphia Dance Projects: guest teaching artist in residency, and The Village of Arts and Humanities. Under the leadership of her mentor Rennie Harris she taught Hip-Hop dance workshops at the University of Cairo, Cairo Ballet company, Zafer Al-Masri Foundation, Jerusalem academy of music and dance, Barroquismo Festival, Stanford University, and Jacobs Pillow Dance Festival. She served as a project facilitator, teaching artist, and advocate for Girls on The Move Leadership program and Camp Sojourner connecting with young women from her community using hip-hop dance, theater and social activism to cultivate leadership and personal development. She currently holds a teaching position at Bryn Mawr College.
Melanie's original work includes her ongoing performance project The Women’s Revolutionary Vagime; A piece that empowers a radical female/femme presence in popular culture using comedy, stepping, and Hip-Hop dance in performative protest. Melanie approaches dance theater as a place for investigation, experimentation, and an opportunity to challenge social ideas around gender and identity.
Tanaquil Márquez (she/her/ella) is a Latina artist who focuses on bold bilingual work, celebrating joy and the LatinX voice. Tanaquil is the Associate Artistic Producing Director of Teatro del Sol, Philadelphia’s premiere bilingual theatre company, the Education Director at 1812 Productions, and the Artistic Director of Teatro Esperanza, a Spanish language theatre company, focusing on the LatinX community in New Brunswick. Previous directing and acting credits include; Rosalind X 3 (Delaware Shakespeare), Set Model Theatre (1812), The Way I Walk (1812), Passport (La Fábrica), Fefu and her Friends (West Chester University), This Is The Week That Is (1812), Azul (La Fábrica), and Bodas de Sangre (Teatro Quarantine). She is also the director and co-writer of Del Shakes’ upcoming bilingual musical adaptation of Twelfth Night, “O Lo Que Quieras”. She recently played Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream at Del Shakes and is currently directing Oedipus El Rey at Teatro del Sol. Tanaquil is beyond thrilled to continue the amazing work of The Core; creating, exploring and exercising joy.
Bi Jean Ngo (she/her): Bi most recently collaborated on and appeared in 1812’s 2021 production of The Way I Walk. Bi was a 2012 recipient of the Jilline Ringle Solo Performance Residency and the Couple of Extra Bucks Fund. She also appeared in It's My Party: The Women and Comedy Project. This season, Bi plans to further develop and perform her solo show, In Search of the Kitchen Gods, in which she navigates the comic complexities of being a Vietnamese American modern woman with the help of the kitchen gods.
Bi is an Actress, Director, and Educator. She holds an MFA from The Actors' Studio Drama School at New School University and a Bachelor's of Science in Film and Television from Boston University. She additionally trained at Dell'Arte International, The Suzuki Company of Toga, Shakespeare and Company, and The Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski. She works primarily in Philadelphia and its surrounding region, and has appeared onstage at Theatre Exile, InterAct Theatre Company, Azuka Theatre, Arden Theatre, Walnut Street Theatre, Theatre Horizon, Delaware Shakespeare, Shakespeare in Clark Park, Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, Sam Tower + Ensemble, and more. Bi directed Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and created online streaming programs and outdoor performances at Delaware Shakes where she is completing her term as Associate Artist. She also directed the Barrymore recommended Candles at Philly Young Playwrights.
She is an adjunct faculty member at Temple University. She is also a founding member of the Philadelphia Asian Performing Artists and was an artist-in-residence at Asian Arts Initiative from 2016-2018. Awards include the 2016 Fox Foundation Fellowship Award administered through TCG, the 2016 Otto Haas Emerging Artist Barrymore Award, and the 2018 Independence Fellowship Foundation Award.
Bi also enjoys culinary exploration and experimentation, shares her life with an amazing fellow Actor and lovely human named David, and is the proud mother to a giant hairy dog named Archie.