W. David Hancock Selected Works

20th century African American artist “Uncle Jimmy” Clemens, who died poor and alone, has left behind an enormous body of work for which he was never recognized.  Uncle Jimmy’s paintings, sculptures and collected artifacts constitute Uncle Jimmy’s life’s work: a radical retelling of Huckleberry Finn which he referred to as “The Illuminated Twain.”  Uncle Jimmy’s widow, Edna Finn, has curated and installed the definitive collection of her late husband’s work to share with the public.  And tonight her show will be visited by Uncle Jimmy’s estranged son, James.  

Written in collaboration with visual artist Wardell Milan, Master exists between the language of theater and the silence of art as it confronts the inadequacies of our American stories head-on, and imagines another kind of freedom.

The Convention of Cartography is a traveling exhibit featuring the collected works of an itinerant, now deceased artist named Mike. The event begins with a presentation by the exhibit'’s curator, who speaks of his travels with Mike as a young boy. Since Mike'’s death, he and his wife have been retracing Mike'’s travels across America to find and retrieve the art objects he left behind in diners, gas stations, highway rest areas and underpasses, union halls, people's’ attics, etc. Interspersed throughout this presentation are videoed interviews the curator held with Mike over his final days in a cancer hospice. The presentation concludes and the audience is invited into a museum of all the works that they have collected thus far. As people explore the museum and interact with Mike'’s artworks, the maps of his travels, and one another, a narrative begins to emerge—a haunting puzzle about the nature of truth, art, and the unknowable of those we love.

Part shopping trip, part haunting, all play, The Race of the Ark Tattoo takes place inside a working flea market run by Mr. P. Foster, who is selling the artifacts of his deceased foster father, Mr. Homer Phinney. Audiences shop the flea market at the beginning (and end) of the play, discovering that each object in the flea market offers its own story. Each performance is different, as the stories to be told that night will be determined by the audience’'s selection of objects from Mr. Phinney’'s salvaged “story ark.” As the stories unfold, the audience discovers that this flea market is, in effect, a mausoleum—a repository for the memories of Foster'’s mysterious life within the relics of his father’'s.

Visit the infamous Incubus Archives! What began as one WWII vet's fascination with Nazi memorabilia—and grew to become that mammoth multimedia history of human cruelty that toured the nation for years—has now been rescued from destruction after several suspicious disappearances of visitors and staff nearly sank the archives. See what remains of the largest collection of evil artifacts. Sift through the fragments of what was once a complete history of humanity's relationship with it's own cruelty. See Lizzie Borden's Axe! Rest your head on Hitler's pillow! Have a word with Charles Manson!

The Incubus Archives has four eerie viewing areas for the audience to choose from and no two shows are alike! If one tour guide gives you the creeps, …dismiss them and get another. But beware—your new host may have far more in store for you than stories. Explore the archives piece by piece, nightmare by horrifying nightmare, until you piece together the terrible secret that haunts the Incubus Archives. Will anyone who visits the Archives ever sleep again? Not likely. You are right to be afraid, but you'd be wrong to miss, The Incubus Archives!

Set in an abandoned campground in Washington state, The Puzzle Locker is a vividly theatrical exploration of "what remains of a civilization, told from the point of view of those who might have survived its destruction." Often wildly surreal and comic, Hancock's distinctive theatrical voice takes a narrative and removes its cohesive forces, the "glue" that holds events together. Hancock leaves audiences with an intriguing puzzle: a world and a narrative which force us to discover for ourselves the links holding the characters and their stories together; a world that is infinitely, though not confusingly, open to multilayered interpretations.

Hancock developed the play at the University of Rochester in the fall of 2004, working with student actors and International Theatre Program Artistic Director Nigel Maister. He developed the characters in the play using the actors who now play them, saying, "This play is this play because of the students . . . It's not like the characters are based on them, but their personalities——who they are——depend on the students. The students helped in the creation by being engaged, by rehearsing, and letting me see the characters develop."

In which three siblings clear out their dead step-dad's trash. Or is it their legacy? And who gets the haunted van?

As part of the Art in the Anchorage program, W. David Hancock presented the multifaceted play Deviant Craft. A literary, interactive performance, Deviant Craft was about a group of fictional female psychiatric ward inmates, who stage Shakespeare'’s The Tempest as an innovative rehabilitation technique. Performed by the Foundry Theater company, Deviant Craft drew on theatrical and literary allusions, so as to present an intriguing open-ended meditation on art and chicanery, insanity and genius.

As the audience gathered for the start of the drama, actors approached people and began to converse in character. Eventually ushered into a crude, barn-like theater, the audience watched the “inmates” alternate between an interpretative performance and the oration of their own life stories.

Booth, by OBIE winning playwright W. David Hancock, is like overhearing the strangest, most moving, and at times most deeply disturbing conversation you will ever have the opportunity to eavesdrop on. Learn more about the production here.