“Fraudway! Presents:” co-directors David Shadburn and Marjanna Smith tease their new show
Imagine being in a stage musical and you’re the only person in the cast who doesn’t know the storyline. That’s the premise of WIT’s new show Fraudway! Presents:, which creates an improvised version of a famous musical where the lead performer is totally in the dark on the plot. The show is the brainchild of directors David Shadburn and Marjanna Smith, who put together a stellar cast of musical improvisers including members of WIT’s musical improv conservatory.
We asked David and Marjanna to tell us more about the show and its origins.
For people who haven’t seen it before, how would you describe Fraudway Presents in a sentence or two?
Marjanna: The most talented musical improvisers in the DMV join forces to create a new story that honors (the premise of) classic Broadway shows and embraces the chaos and spontaneous joy of improvised songwriting and storytelling. I may be a little biased about the cast being the most talented improvisers around… but I’m also a terrible liar, so I must be telling the truth!
David: We’re going to take a classic Broadway show and put our own special improvised twist on it so that you see it in a way you’ve never seen before – and for our lead actor each night, it’ll be their first time seeing it at all!
The idea for the show traces back to a show from last year’s Improvapalooza during a show that involved the movie Legally Blonde. Can you walk us through how that show grew into a full production?
Marjanna: Yes! Shoutout to Joey Scully, Lore Leupold, Stephen Gabauer, and Kristin Stowell for coming together to make Illegally Blonde happen for Improvapalooza last year. Doing that show was the most fun I’ve ever had on stage, and we could tell the audience was loving it too.
So in the spring of this year, Joey, Lore and I started working towards pitching the show concept to WIT. After a lot of emails and meetings to nail down logistics, the show format, rehearsal space, etc., we were thrilled to find out we had secured five shows in the upcoming fall run. We put out calls for an accompanist and co-director, and I was so excited to welcome Andrew Zimmer and David to my creative team!
Andrew, David and I had a few long, detailed, and honestly fascinating discussions about the format (i.e., How much background information should we give the lead at the beginning of the show? How much should the cast try to stick to the original plot versus letting it go off the rails? Can you believe Marjanna doesn’t know Little Shop of Horrors?). We put together our cast (through the combined efforts of Lore, Joey, David, and I), and then we were ready to go!
The show’s title went through a few name ideas before landing on “Fraudway Presents.” What made that the right fit?
Marjanna: We had come up with a few ideas during our initial meetings with Mark, but they were kind of half-baked, and we were pretty much using them as placeholders. Then a few weeks after I told her about the show concept, (our now cast member) Robin Dickey texted me out of the blue with, “What about Fraudway?” and I immediately knew that was the name. It’s short, simple, and conveys what we are doing with this show in just one word. I’ve taken to affectionately referring to our cast as “frauds.” We had also considered using spoof names for each individual production (like Phantom of the Oper-huh?, which you may have seen in some promotional materials) but ultimately decided that might confuse patrons about what they were coming to see. But I simply had to bring it up here because David, Robin, and I are quite proud of the spoof names we came up with. The next time you see any of us around, please ask us about our puns.
How did you determine the lead for each show and the accompanying show that they weren’t familiar with?
David: Our cast is probably tired of filling out Google forms… but basically we just had to ask everyone what shows they knew and didn’t and go from there. There were some shows we really wanted to do but it turned out everyone knew them so we couldn’t! It has been very fun to discover shows that are total classics for some people that others know little to nothing about.
What’s the funniest or most memorable moment that’s come out of rehearsal so far?
David: We have been practicing with different musicals, so for each show we put on it’ll be our cast’s first time attempting in order to make sure our lead actor each night is totally in the dark. We did a practice run with The Sound of Music – in our version, Maria left the abbey and decided she wanted to pursue jump rope. She became a teacher at a jump rope school, where she met the Von Trapp children, who didn’t want to jump rope – they just wanted to jump boys!
Marjanna: Every rehearsal has included a memorable moment for me so far — starting with our very first rehearsal in which, after months of planning and coordinating schedules and nailing down a format, we finally got all these amazing cast members in a room and got to watch them play together for the first time. They are all so incredibly talented and funny that I laughed almost nonstop for the 30-minute montage they did at the end of rehearsal, and it made my entire week. Our last rehearsal included some seriously sassy group choreography that had me cheering from my seat and a truly heartwarming shared chorus during the finale song of a runthrough that was so beautiful and perfect, I almost started crying. I cannot overstate the amount of joy I’ve experienced in getting to witness the talent and chemistry of this cast — it’s like magic.
Anything else you want fans (or the uninitiated) to know before they grab a ticket?
David: If you know a show by heart, come watch our improvisers find ways to bring back characters from the original in a whole new context while we follow the fun to our brand new world. If you don’t know anything about a show, come discover why these shows are so much fun! And remember, you and our lead actor that night will be in the same boat!
Marjanna: Expect big swings. Expect big laughs. Expect the unexpected!
Fraudway: Presents runs through Oct. 24 at WIT. Get your tickets.