Wizard Oil Productions began on a napkin.
After finishing a very successful student production, written, directed by and starring a close group of friends, the last holdouts at the after-party began discussing the future. What did we want to do with our lives? Or even just after college? How would theatre factor in? And if we committed ourselves to working in the arts – how would we support ourselves?

After some soul-searching and a cheap bottle of wine, we were having our first production meeting. We created a list of people interested in producing work. We knew we needed a wide base to cover all the jobs that would have to be done – on both the artistic and business end.

We had a preliminary meeting of about fifteen people to gauge interest. Six of us went on to form Wizard Oil Productions.

I have been wrestling with the idea of working in the arts for a long time. At first it seemed like second nature – moving from one show to the next. However, as I got older and watched my friends study politics and social work and medicine, I wondered if doing theatre for a living was not a selfish thing to do. Yes, I’ll entertain people. Theatre is a good diversion from the stresses of daily life. But it can be more than that; it should be more than that. I decided if I was going to commit myself to this profession I needed to not only give people an enjoyable theatrical experience, I had to make them think. To educate them, to increase awareness, to make people ask questions and challenge ideas about the world around them.

I brought this up at our next meeting. What kind of company are we? What do we want to do? I proposed my idea. We agreed. We would concentrate on producing work we felt would make an impact on each audience member, giving them a little ‘food for thought’ - perhaps a new perspective, or an interest in something they knew very little about. We created a list of foci ranging from social concerns such as poverty, racism and politics, to personal problems like human frailty, compassion and love. We plan to produce both new and old work considering these topics in various styles, including multi-media and interactive theatre, as well as possibly through the medium of children’s theatre.

Our production team works together to make this happen. We are a group of multi-talented theatre artists who rotate jobs to meet the needs of a particular production. We double and triple as techies, actors and directors, putting our strongest skills forward on different projects, working together to bring a play to life.

We look forward to bringing you work that we find meaningful, challenging and distinctive. And we hope that the subjects we tackle theatrically will have an impact on you – both emotionally and intellectually. If we succeed in reaching even one person, we are accomplishing our goal.

 

Amanda Kate Joshi
Artistic Director