We believe the world needs more comedy.

We believe there are conversations that people are able to have only after they have been broken open by laughter, and truths that can only be said and heard when spoken in a really funny voice.

Twenty-five years ago, Jennifer Childs co-founded 1812 Productions, a theater company dedicated to theatrical comedy, and she creates a good portion of the work we produce each year. Making comedy is how we make sense of the world. It’s how we grapple with things that make us angry, uncomfortable or sad. It’s how we take the power away from things that scare us. It’s how we investigate what is possible. It’s how we express joy. Most importantly, it is how we connect with the audience. And, at the end of the day, that connection, that communion, that place where we meet, recognize and are open to each other is what our work is about.

We have an affinity for big ridiculous costumes and South Philly wise women. We investigate comic history and search for the miraculous in the mundane. In all of this, the role of the audience is primary. As the old saying goes, “If a joke gets told in the forest and no one is there to hear it, is it funny?” Our work needs the audience. Their laughter completes the rhythm of the play. At 1812, we acknowledge and deputize the audience saying, “We are a group of people in a room together—we want you to make noise! This is not about us performing for you, this is about us making music together…

You are necessary and you are welcome.”

Our work is a blend of order and chaos. The careful architecture of comedic form filled with the divine messiness and unpredictability of being human. We create work about questions we don’t have answers for. We create work about the nature of comedy and why we laugh. We create work that embraces the sublime and the ridiculous. We create work that speaks to our perspective on the world. As Jennifer Childs has said many times before, “At not quite five feet tall, I have spent most of my life looking up. And the world I see is big and full of promise and possibility.”