Yo Frederick, it’s been awhile. Hibernation aside for Subversive online, subversive-y stuff is happening all around. Look no further than Subversive contributor Declan Poehler – who recently started writing about shows in the DMV, but mostly about Frederick. Makes sense since his new blog is entitled What is Frederick?
[by the way, new drinking game, just how many times can I write “Subversive” into this piece?]
We’ll talk more about Declan’s blog later in this post, stay tuned…
So next on the radar is Elizabeth Lucas and her merry/outside-the-box oriented Free Range Humans production team – FRH loves to put on immersive theater/media in unusual spaces. Lucas been prolific and ceaseless in motion- directing this in New York, producing that – so much so that we lost track of all her endeavors (in Frederick alone she put on the massively audacious and amazing “Murder Ballad” at McClintock Distilling and “It’s Always Patsy Kline” at Sky Stage last summer).
Next week Free Range Humans will put on another ambitious production – a limited 3 show run (Dec 6-8) of “Striking 12” at Union Mills (close to the Frederick County Public Schools HQ and the MARC train station on East Street and Patrick. Union Mills is another old building with a bit of history, good bones, and ghosts roaming through its corridors – and a place no one would have guessed could be a site for a rad indie rock quasi-anti-holiday off-broadway musical.
We spoke over telephone transmissions about Striking 12 and the challenges that come with thinking outside the box when it comes to ‘off-the-grid’ venues (note: phrasing would suggest there’s no electricity in the building – not true – just me being a writer/poseur).
Before we jump into conversation- let me situate you to “Striking 12.” From the New York Times when this first debuted off-broadway:
The most important ingredient for a successful musical, it has long been acknowledged, is a first-rate score, and this one is terrific. The rhyme schemes aren’t particularly complex, but the lyrics are alive with wit and humor, and they don’t shy away from surging emotion either. -NYT Charles Isherwood reviewing “Striking 12” November 13, 2006.
You can get a good sense of this musical with Isherwood’s stellar review (which you can handily read here). This snippet video sets up the overture- which harkens to the Narrator in The Big Lebowski interacting in surreal fashion with Jeff Bridges’ shaggy protagonist…
Let’s re-join with Lucas, interview already in progress…
Elizabeth Lucas: …it’s a fantastic piece – it’s a layered grown up/mature complex bit of storytelling. Very loosely it’s based on Hans Christian Anderson’s “Little Match Girl,” it’s a holiday New Year’s Eve story about a guy who’s struggling with the holidays and who gets through (with help) from a stranger…through that he finds…feeling again after going through this rough patch. It’s for everybody who has a love/hate relationship with the holidays or knows what a difficult holiday looks like. At the same time the score is so energetic and so much fun.
The cast is seven actor/musicians and in this one they actually are the band as well with these layers of storytelling where the actors are the storytellers. And then you have the layer of the man who had had enough, which is literally his character name, The Man Who Has Had Enough. Then you have the third layer of the Little Match Girl being told as a parable for him.
It’s written by a band called Groovelilly. They were playing bars in the Lower East Side when I was coming up so I’ve known them a long time and they’re old friends. This thing when it first played off-broadway in Union Square just blew everyone away. It was sort of the first major musical that had these layers as a way of telling things through musician telling a story. It set off a whole trend that ended with John Doyle and company and Sweeney Todd and all of that. They were kind of groundbreaking when this first story first came out. It’s more about how they tell it than anything else. Again, it’s for grownups, it’s complex storytelling…it’s not a bring-your-kids kind of a show, although they would enjoy the music. (Laughs) this one is where I say you can’t bring your kids.
Subversive: You don’t seem to want to dabble in formulaic. The same can be said for your unique choice of non-traditional venues around town for your productions. Tell me about this venue, Union Mills.
Elizabeth Lucas: The Union Mills production – it’s going to be special. I’m so excited by it because the space is really deep and interesting. We were in there last night with my designers and figured out a way of using the space that’s going to make people look at it differently. That’s sort of the way we operate is take a space and make it fit the story – yes – but also make it special and present it in a way that an audience is going to look at it in a whole new way.
When you break out of the 4th wall, when you break out of the typical theater way of doing things, it brings such life to an environment. And that environment illuminates the story. It’s only 3 days but oh my gosh I hope people come to the Frederick one (note: Elizabeth is referring to a Blackrock Theater @Germantown run of “Striking 12” the week after the Frederick run concludes).
It’s a raw space…
Every time I walk into an interesting place, I start imagining ‘what would I do here.’ Union Mills is one of those place where I walk in and you can feel the history and you can feel the layers and depth and the grit of the place. At the same time, it’s gotten this beautiful renovation, feels very glossy in places and underdone in places – so when I’m looking for a place for something immersive, that environment just has to be special…specifically in Frederick, I want to bring people to places that they haven’t been yet, that they might be interested in seeing. So finding new places each time and finding places that I can alter a point of view on is part of the value of what we’re doing.
Subversive: You are really prolific, directing this, doing that. How do you pick productions and find the time?
Elizabeth Lucas: (laughs) – I’m not sleeping. The things I’ve done out of town have just been me as a director, so those have been helping pay the bills when I’m trying to get a company up and running. For the beginning of anything…I have to be really prolific to make it work and see what sticks. After this round of three show (this is what we’re calling the Winter Season), I need to take a step back and see what worked and what am I dropping. What’s the best volume and range to continue to do in Frederick. Will Frederick support it? If I can’t sell tickets on these 3 shows then back to the drawing board on what Free Range Humans is…
Subversive: Are you able to say at this point that the trend line is positive one for Frederick or is that still to be determined?
Elizabeth Lucas: Still TBD. Finding venues this time around was harder than I expected. The venues available are still small. If I can get to the point where I’m consistently selling out a hundred seat venue then I think we’re great. Then I can keep building until I either build my own venue or figure out a venue that can accommodate our activity. It’s really about tickets sales, as much as it’s great to get donations and things too…I’m keeping these tickets as low as humanly possible and trying to bring as high a quality as possible. I need an audience to see value in that and the way they see the value in that is if they buy a ticket.
That’s the balancing act: can I convince people of the value of not having to drive south for this level of quality performance? Elizabeth Lucas
Subversive: The Winter Subscription that Free Range Humans is now offering for 3 different shows in Frederick -seems like a neat option for people to see different work.
Elizabeth Lucas: There’s a shape taking place here. The shape I think is the right thing for Frederick is a winter season and summer season. The winter season continues to be these small cache musicals, and the summer season becomes a mix of outdoor work camps – trying to work out a new musical camp with Other Voices Theater – which I’m very excited about. It’s not definite, there’s a lot of pieces that need to fall into place, but if it happens its going to be a really exciting musical that I’d be so happy to bring here. It’s a different kind of partnership then what we’ve done so far.
That leaves me the fall and spring to plan and to make sure I’m attending to the other parts of the augmented reality stuff and the future-looking venue component of what we’re trying to do [think Meow Wolf in Santa Fe:]
The fall/spring (allows) time to do networking and conferences and planning and step back from being in production all the time. I think that’s the kind of pace we’re looking at – that’s ideal.
Subversive: Can you give me the skinny on the other 2 shows in the Winter Subscription?
Elizabeth Lucas: “I Love You Because” is a romantic musical comedy loosely based on Jane Austin’s “Pride and Prejudice.” We’re doing that upstairs at Serendipity. They’re renovating their space to be a venue up there and I think we’re going to be one of the first to use it. I’m very excited to try that space out.
It’s funny, it’s naughty, it’s irreverent and romantic – just in time for Valentine’s Day. Only 4 performances in Frederick (Feb 7-10) and only 40 seats for that one. So that one’s really going to be tiny.
The third one (March 14-16 / March 21-23) is called “35MM”, it’s much more experimental piece by Ryan Scott Oliver, who wrote one of the songs for Smash, the television series). He’s somebody who musical theater fans under the age of 30 are fanatic about. And musical theater fans over the age of 35 have never heard of. It’s more of a song cycle than anything, it’s written to be an immersive piece where the songs were written in response to photographs. Along with Ryan, Matthew Murphy, the photographer, they created this collaboration as a way of re-looking at storytelling through song and image. So photographs are very much a part of that production. For that we’ll be back at McClintock Distilling – which has a great set up for it – but we’ll be able to look at in a very different way from how we had it at “Murder Ballad.”
Subversive: Last question, tell me something specifically about Union Mills’ that you might be able to utilize specially for “Striking 12.”
Elizabeth Lucas: In a room that stretches from Carrol creek to Patrick Street in length – we are angling the stage in such a way that the depth of that becomes a part of the flow. To have that depth is impossible in any traditional theater. In this case, it’s going to add so much by giving us room to take time with movement —and have it look fascinating. We’re going to be using the inside and the outside of the building…the versatility of the space, even the columns down the middle, we’re using that to draw a line and a diagonal that I think is going to be really special. We’re using the windows with the ramp outside as a way of separating and blending past, present and future.
IF we’re doing our job ultimately, we’re making Frederick feeling really special. We’re giving people sort of ghosts of fun in each of these building we go into – ghosts of stories, adding layers and meaning to these places. – Elizabeth Lucas
Here’s the show dates/times for Striking 12 at Union Mills, Frederick:
Thursday, December 6 at 7:30pm + Post-Show Talk Back
Friday, December 7 at 8:00pm + 7:00pm Pre-Show Conversation About Making New Musicals
Saturday, December 8 at 8:00pm
Find tickets here at Free Range Humans.
Extra time: I can’t forget to mention other pivotal members of Free Range Humans including Marci Shegogue, who is a musical force of nature. I met her a while back in person (we were doing an escape room together – another story for another time), but seeing her in action, particularly conducting the live band for “Murder Ballad” at McClintock, she is the musical glue that holds up much of Free Range Humans. She’s an integral part of the reason why audience members lucky enough to see Free Range Humans work in/around Frederick have pointed out the visceral quality element to the production side of that company.
Extra extra time:
More onWhat is Frederick? Recently in his new-ish blog, Declan mused about the Fun Boy’s ‘Drunksgiving’ show at Nola (including a cover of Talking Head’s “Psycho Killer” – fuck me for having missed it!)…so many shows he’s written about. He also did a zany interview with Mr Husband on his new album Ocean Pines and who pulled off his first art show at 11:11 Cafe — and HOLY Judas Priest, today Nov 30th he just dropped a single: CHRISTMAS HAIR DO. Dude, that Mr Husband is unstoppable.
I’m going waaay back to last month when Evil Swords and Slow Groan played mind blowing sets at Guidos – Declan, what he does is take these efficient video snapshots and lovingly youtubed it -which in turn is archiving this particular era of the Frederick scene. Check this link to his video compilation of Evil Swords – who so brought it that they utterly transformed that falling apart backroom/performance space in Guidos into a halloween zombie scare-tacular staging ground – it was as if art school weirdos were suddenly embracing the horror genre. They brought the spectacle and it was magnificent! Equally jaw dropping was a transgendered musician trained in Tuvan throat singing and melding that into the noise pop of Slow Groan – to which a number of awed transfixed people in the room spoke openly to one another: “When the fuck does this EVER happen in Frederick? Somehow it’s happening in Guidos AND I’M FREAKING OUT!”
