A new show on stage at the Delaware Theatre Company takes audiences onto the high seas at a time when towering clipper ships competed for the fastest voyage from the far side of the world to Britain.
“The Chequerboard Watch” is set aboard one of those clipper ships as it voyages from Australia to England in 1855. The title refers to the diverse races of the crew, says Mimi Warnick, Delaware Theatre Company’s artistic director and one of the show’s co-creators.
“The ‘Chequerboard Watch’ means black and white mixed race crews,” she explains. “In history, a lot of religion and music and culture can be traced back to this time as kind of like a transfusion, because all these people were allowed to be on the boat at the same time in a time where they could not be together on land.”
That melded culture informs the show, which uses both modern-day musical theatre music and traditional sea shanties. The drama unfolds as the ship’s captain drives his crew and his ship to be the first to reach home, in a quest for profit and prestige.
“It's a story where the man-made needs of the world combine with the natural rhythms of sailors and the sea and what can go wrong when they don't agree with each other,” Warnick says.
Warnick came up with the idea for the show several years ago, during the pandemic. She says the spark came from her own background.
“In the pandemic, I had a lot more time on my hands, like a lot of people in the arts, and found an interest in sea shanties,” she says. “They come from a big Irish household, did a lot of Irish dancing growing up, so the music was already immediately appealing to me.”
As co-creator of the show, Warnick shares credit with Jack Denman, Eyakeno Ekpo, and Selena Seballo. Equally important to creating the show, she says, are the early audiences and their feedback.
“I am the conceiver of this story and some of the story is by me, but I think art should be a collaborative effort,” she says. “So I think the audience is a massive part of that as well, because they're ultimately the consumer.”
As the company rehearsed the play earlier this month, another group of adventurers were also undertaking a journey - the astronauts aboard the Artemis II spacecraft on its voyage around the moon. That voyage resonated with the cast and crew.
“It's that thing of everyone comes from a different place, but when you're stuck on that thing, what conversations happen, what conflicts arise that you have to get over in a very compact place, and you just kind of have to get over your differences to succeed,” Warnick says.
“The Chequerboard Watch” runs through May 3 at the Delaware Theatre Company’s stage in Wilmington. Tickets and showtimes are at Delaware Theatre dot org.
Delaware Public Media's arts coverage is made possible, in part, by support from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency dedicated to nurturing and supporting the arts in Delaware, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.
