Getting my freak on: catching the open rehearsal of The Sandbox Collective’s ‘Sideshow’
Last week, I was invited to Sandbox Night, an open rehearsal for the upcoming show of the theater company The Sandbox Collective. Those invited are the company’s friends from the theater and present and former collaborators, such as myself. Back in 2015, I was brought in as dramaturg and co-headwriter of their original monologue play “No Filter” and “No Filter 2.0.” They invited me to Sandbox Night for “Little Shop of Horrors,” “Tiny Beautiful Things,” and “Next to Normal.” Last week, it was for their upcoming show “Sideshow,” which will also be director Toff De Venecia’s last production with the company as he embarks on a post-graduate degree abroad.
“Sideshow,” as The Sandbox Collective shares, “is a musical about real-life conjoined twins and their inspiring journey of survival, identity, and love. It’s a moving portrait of outcasts fighting for their place, and the chance to be loved.” The play’s book and lyrics were written by Bill Russell and the music by Henry Krieger. It is based on the life of Daisy and Violet Hilton, conjoined twins who had a short-lived career in the 1930s. The show opened on Broadway in 1997 and was nominated for four Tony awards, and was revived in 2014 with a revised book and new songs added, taking a darker approach to the story and with additional biographical details added to the narrative. The theater company Atlantis Theatrical produced their version back in 2018, but I was told that they used the 2014 version, while The Sandbox Collective opted for the original 1997 production.
Sandbox Night is done at Mirror Studios, where the company rehearses the play. They perform the whole musical in one go, take feedback from the guests, and continue to develop the production before they open on July 26. There’s an alternate cast with the twins played by Marynor Madamesila and Tanya Manalang, or Krystal Kane and Molly Langley. Playing Teddy, a show promoter who takes the twins from a freak show to vaudeville, is Reb Atadero and CJ Navato, while Timmy Pavino and Vien King alternate as Buddy, Teddy’s friend who wants to write songs and help the twins become stars. Alternating for the role of Jake, a member of the freak show who cares deeply for the twins, are Marvin Ong and Joshua Cabiladas. For the rehearsal I witnessed, it was Madamesila and Manalang, Atedero, Pavino, and Ong who were on the rehearsal stage.
What’s evident in that run-through was the powerful singing of that cast and ensemble. It was my first time to hear the songs, and they really brought the emotions out of each note. It was my first time to see Madamesila, Manalang, and Ong perform, and they were incredible, with Ong really making a powerful mark with his very presence. I can imagine how much stronger his presence will be when he’s in full costume and make-up. Atadero and Pavino are always reliable, but it is Jon Santos (who has no alternate) also steals the spotlight as the manager of the freak show.
As a director, Toff De Venecia likes to play with form and push the boundaries of theater, and he uses Brechtian techniques to play with the images we see on stage. While the show is set in the 1930s, he’s not afraid to use video assists to quickly connect the themes of the show to present-day issues, connecting the twin leads’ need for normalcy with the contemporary world’s marginalized sectors, clearly an allusion to the queer community. It really all makes sense when the show’s ending hits, and you see the parallelisms that De Venecia was going for suddenly click, and everything makes sense.
After the rehearsal, I sat down with De Venecia to pick his brain about the show, his vision for it, and what happens to The Sandbox Collective now that he’s taking a two-year break. “All the freaks in the show are created by the company,” he shares. Each member of the ensemble who plays the other freaks in the freakshow was tasked to develop their own characters, which De Venecia said to “tie in with an advocacy that they believed in and let it tie into their performance.” What I didn’t see in the rehearsal but will be more evident when the costumes come in is that there will be a few nods to Indigenous people, which might work well for a 1930s freakshow carnival in America.
De Venecia decided to put up the show as a way of coming full circle. “It’s my last for the meantime before I leave to study masters for two years,” he says. “This was also the first show I directed for Blue Rep, and the second show was Little Shop of Horrors.” Two of the last plays he directed for The Sandbox Collective happen to be the first two plays he directed when he started directing in college. “I love this show,” he says, laughing as he gets emotional and teary-eyed. “I love freaks. I love the othered. I love misunderstood people.” He comments how it’s the first time he is using “a Brechtian style of production,” but is quick to point out that Brecht always pulls back the emotion while Sandbox leans heavily towards it, and he wants “the audience to walk away from this entertained but also to hopefully make them leave the theater passionate about wanting to do something about holding space, queering space, and fighting back against injustice and discrimination.”
When asked what will happen to Sandbox now that he’s going, he quickly states, “It’s going to continue under exciting new leadership, which we will reveal at a later time. I’m excited for the new direction that Sandbox will go in the next two years and beyond.”
