Isabella Waldron ‘20 received a We Act Grant for the Summer of 2020. Read her testimonial below about her experience pivoting from bringing her original stage play Jawbone to the Edinburgh Fringe to creating a feature-length animated film.
[TW: This blog post discusses sexual assault briefly in the 4th paragraph]
Upon receiving the We Act Grant, my original plan was to take Jawbone to the 2020 Edinburgh Fringe. With a team of actors, a puppeteer, and a director, we crowdfunded and workshopped scripts and made all our plans as the summer grew nearer and nearer. The beginning of pandemic shook things, but we figured by August, we’d be well on our way to Scotland. Obviously, that was not how things happened.
We paused Jawbone for a month while the team sifted through general well-being and global pandemic. In June, at my mother’s home back from graduating on my back porch in Claremont, I had an idea. Turning Jawbone from a stage play to an animated film. The elements of magical realism that weave through the show would lend themselves well to the world of stop-motion animation. I knew an oil-painter in Portland who began making short films from her work a few years ago, so I checked in with my director and reached out to Shelley Jordon.
That set us off again. We spent the fall of 2020 reconfiguring the script and our plans to shift Jawbone to an animated world. In January, I moved to London, but thanks to Zoom we were able to bring together a cast of talented actors across Zoom to rehearse and subsequently record a full audio recording. Our team came from Portland, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Georgia, San Jose, and London. On a more personal note, having just moved continents amid global pandemic and into a full national lockdown, these rehearsals and project became a huge source of light and creative joy for me. I was able to work, to pay our team of working creatives, and have something to look forward to. The script went through draft after draft, and what emerged was a piece I am very proud of.
I am writing this now having just returned from a filming trip to Rhodendron, Oregon where our director, assistant director, sound person/cinematographer, and lead actor assembled in person for the first time ever. Somewhere in the process we decided to film the opening and closing monologue live-action to unravel Frankie’s story of haunting and sexual assault most effectively. Not only did I learn a huge amount about filmmaking (even lying in the dirt at 12am with a boom mic and headphones to record sound), but I felt so gratified to be among people passionate about making this project happen. Jawbone originated from a very painful place of my own sexual assault, and seeing that seed transformed into a piece of art, into a group of new collaborators and friends across the country; seeing it expand from words on a page to stories of other women’s experiences and catharsis, has been hugely healing and rewarding.
With our filming done, our audio recorded and mixed, the next step is to hand it over to our lead animator, Hayley Monsoon, and let her interpret the story we are weaving. This process will take some time, but will end in a feature-length film that I can then add to my portfolio. I am so grateful for the support of Scripps in this project, especially in the wake of Covid. I could never imagine how much this project and my life would change in the last two years, but I am thankful for each lesson learned along the way. I have learned how to produce, how to lead a room on screen and in person, how to film, how to record sound, how to connect with and communicate ideas to artists in different media forms. I have learned deep patience, adaptation to changes and failures, and persistence. I have gained confidence in my voice as a writer and creative. I can only imagine what more I will learn as this project continues.
Thank you for your Support,
Isabella Waldron
