Meet Rat Queen Theatre Company: Devised Theatre Company

We had the good fortune of connecting with Rat Queen Theatre Company and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Rat Queen Theatre Company, what matters most to you?
Our core value as a company is collaboration over competition. This is what drives the work that we make and the way that we make that work. Rat Queen makes historically-based devised theatre that is ambitious in its subject matter and method of creation. We believe that the most widely taught historical narratives are neglectful of the truth and, honestly — boring. We use history to question everyone’s assumptions (including our own) about our society’s origins. Utilizing the unabashedly loud, queer, and ostentatious, we set out to disassemble our country’s legacy of capitalism and individualism. To do this, we make non-hierarchical and collaborative work, creating plays and musicals through a long-form devising process that centralizes each artist’s voice, identity, and autonomy.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
Rat Queen wants to tell historical narratives differently, incorporating diverse perspectives. We create stories and characters for and alongside the performers we’re working with and strive to give them space to permeate the script with their own experience. In our room, the actors are also writers. We believe in the importance of integrating a vision of history that is radically inclusive into our consciousness. In doing so, we can gain a vivid picture of the institutions that have manipulated and subjugated so many and start to dismantle them. The artists we serve are diverse, queer, and interested in creating highly collaborative anti-capitalist work. That being said, we foster a creative practice born from self-criticism, anti-racism, accessibility, and creative fulfillment.
The best feeling, as artistic leaders, is when divisors feel engaged and palpably excited about a piece, so much so so that they come up with ideas that are a million times better than anything we could have thought up. That’s when you feel like you’re on the right track; when you’re able to lay the groundwork for a world that’s rich enough for your collaborators to understand it, run with it, and populate it with detailed characters, events, and images to create one, united narrative.

The people who we’ve been lucky to work with as devisors and composers are truly amazing. The fact that they trust us and care enough about the source material to invest their time and brainpower makes us proud; it makes us want to work harder and create work that’s deserving of such a team.

Content-wise, Rat Queen is interested in work that approaches dense or politically polarizing histories with campy concepts and over-the-top elements. Stylistically, we feel that this sets our work apart. We feel like these weird, campy elements provide a more accessible entry point to historic events. Shocking the system and recalibrating what we think we know and ultimately allowing for deeper, more open-minded reflection. For example, in Miss Atomic Power, we are investigating the events of the Nevada Weapons Testing Sites between 1951-1962 when the United States government knowingly poisoned 10,000-75,000 people living downwind of the bomb, burying incriminating health reports and called those living around the test sites “a low- use segment of the population.” Rather than deliver a lecture about these events, we decided to couch this history in the story of a beauty pageant, a UFO roadside attraction, a toxic mother-daughter relationship, and a pair of space aliens named Dave. With the bizarre setting and quirky characters, our aim was to use absurdism to remove the story from immediate political polarization, and humor to bring the audience into painful identification with the characters.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Well for starters, (if it wasn’t pandemic times) we’d take them first thing to whatever was playing at The Brick, in Williamsburg. Theresa Buchheister, the Brick’s artistic director is the patron saint of DIY Brooklyn theatre. There is so much gate-keeping in theatre, and Theresa is one of the people working tirelessly to create opportunities and community for weird artists (particularly those who haven’t had a ton of opportunities so far.) Anything that’s playing at The Brick, is bound to be exciting, freaky, and full of life, and that would be the first stop.

At the Alligator Lounge, the bar across the street from the Brick, you can get a free pizza when you buy a beer. That would probably be on the agenda as well.

Our friend Maggie Crane is an insanely talented stand-up comedian, so if she’s doing a show anywhere (which she always is, usually in someone’s basement, or the park these days) we’d take them to that.

Our marketing director, Non Kuramoto, is also an amazing artist, so if she’s creating a play, doing stand-up, or on the set of a music video, we’d be there.

If they were lucky enough to be in town when our friends at Night Drive Theatre Company, Meta Phys Ed., or Checkmark Productions were producing one of their plays, screenings, or special events that would be our next stop. Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
We have a select number of frequent collaborators that have shaped many of our stories, shown us continuous support, and have stuck by us through many late-night rehearsals, rambling email exchanges, and multiple script drafts. Though we cannot thank every person individually, we must acknowledge that our ensembles and creative teams make the work what it is. We ask a lot from our collaborators and they always eagerly rise to the challenge.

Special shoutouts must be given to Dylan Whelan and Simon Henriques, both of whom have been a part of our musical Judy Doomed Us All since our first workshop in 2018, originating the roles of Nancy Reagan and Anthony Dolan respectively. They taught us so much about what it means to devise and through their work we were able to grow our process.

Linnea Valdivia, a brilliant dramaturg, has combed through our scripts and given consistently amazing feedback. Her intelligence is unparalleled and our stories only improve under her eye. She has been particularly instrumental in the development of Miss Atomic Power, about the history of the beauty pageants held in Los Vegas to celebrate the government testing of the atomic bomb

Nathan Leigh has taken a chance on us, numerous times. We have always loved his music and were so excited when he agreed to be one of the composers for our 2019 production of Judy. We are thrilled that he is joining us once again for our newest show The Goddamn Tooney Lunes about a group of teens who form a punk band in backwoods New Hampshire.

Finally, we want to thank Mayday Space in Bushwick Brooklyn. To use their words, Mayday is, “a neighborhood resource and a citywide destination for engaging programming, a home for radical ideas and debate, and a welcoming gathering place for people and movements to work, learn, celebrate and build together.” Mayday has generously allowed us to rehearse, perform, and gather since we began our company back in 2016. Without them, we would not be where we are today.

Website: https://www.ratqueentheatreco.com/

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Image Credits
Valerie Terranova, Mahima Saigal