Tom
We’re working with a really great music and sound designer, Andre, how did he come to the project, was that through Jen Avery?

Nic
No, actually, Andre’s done shows at Strawdog before and he’s done shows with me at Strawdog before and he’s also kind of a homeboy.

Julie
How much freedom are you giving the design team in general?

Nic
At the beginning, a pretty fair amount.

Julie
Now?

Nic
It kind of depends, I mean, when you’re dealing with style it’s all about rules, building a set of rules that every designer can adhere to.  So we built the rules and now, as we’re going, we’re finding ourselves at impasses at certain moments.  There’re moments where it’s hard to keep to the rules that we set and, at that stage of the game, you have go back and reconsider your rules.

So a lot of the preliminary ideas that we’re operating on are some of the first impulses of the design team and myself, you know, straight up, first impulses, just to kind of get something and then we revise our plan as we go along.  I think there’s a fair degree of freedom and if I can make sure that all of the designers are focusing in the same way then they can have ultimate freedom.  Because we’re all trying to tell the same story and we’re all trying to tell it in the same manner.  They know what they’re doing better than I do, in each of their specific disciplines.

Julie
Okay, and back to Andre.

Nic
The Pluessinator?

Julie
The what?

Nic
His name is Andre Pluess.  I call him the Pluessinator.

Julie
Okay, gotcha.

Nic
Again, because I am a dork.

Julie
[laughing] I think we’ve established that.

Nic
I can’t overemphasize that point enough, people.

Tom
When you were in junior high, were you the president of a club?

Nic
The Dungeons and Dragons club?

Julie
[laughing so hard she might faint]

Tom
All right, just wanted to double check.

Nic
I think I was also representing the chess club at that point in time if you want to get technical.

Tom
I was going to say that I think it’s interesting that the music in the show is going to be performed by a group, half of which, to be generous, are not-

Julie
Professional?

Tom
-regular musicians. [Tom Hickey included]  I think that it’s really great that the show has a junk band.

Nic
Little Rascals Band is actually how we started out talking about it.

Tom
And it plays into that Rough Theatre idea that you were talking about before-

Nic
That’s exactly correct.  I really like Andre a lot, and I’ve always admired his work as a sound designer and it’s always really hard to get his attention because he just had a Broadway show open.  He’s not fucking around.

Tom
Metamorphosis [is the Broadway show Andre Pluess composed the music for].

Nic
Metamorphosis.

And the way I was able to seduce him into this, and it was already an idea in my head anyways with the ninjas, was to have it be live music.  A lot of the stuff that he does, he has to create all the music and record it in a studio.  So he was stoked about the idea of being able to come in and play and I said, listen, I’m going to give you a couple of people who, like, we’ve got Hickey on the accordion, I know Shelto can play the guitar, Gregor can pound on shit, but as to the quality or the competence, I don’t know.

His skills have blown my mind so far in terms of really, really capturing a sound that I think is going to support all of the work we’re doing.

[At this point in the interview Julie O’Keefe forced, at gunpoint, Tom and Nic to drink another shot]

Nic
Christ on a bike.

Tom
One of the things that I really like about working with Andre is that he knows how to work with anyone at any skill level.  He gives you a lot of respect and then he knows how to scale what he’s doing for every person.

Nic
His game is tight.  He was an important find.  A lot of them were.  Kimberly Senior coming in on the puppet side with her conceptual ideas has been really significant.

Tom
A topic that we haven’t discussed is the overall design concept for the show, the mixture of styles.  I know you went into it with this Global idea for the look of it and feel of it.  Is that fair to say?

Nic
Yeah, absolutely, well I mean, mythical and in terms of mythical using a global way.  Instead of just creating our own weird screwdriver-head race of people.  Just establishing the fact that this is nowhere and everywhere all at the same time by having things from everywhere, by having artifacts from all these different cultures represented.

Tom
And time periods.

Nic
Absolutely.  A lot of the concepts that we concentrated on during the design meetings had to do with opposition.  Metaphorical stuff we were putting into opposition, some of the subject/thematic stuff: Free Will vs. Fate, and Hope vs. Despair, and Altruism vs. Selfishness, and Lust vs. Love.  Just figuring out in the play.  There’s a lot of opposition existing in the play and so we’re trying to concentrate on that.  I guess that has more to do with an acting/directing style approach.  But for the designers it’s a very multi-cultural, very layered thing.  I’ve got a list somewhere close to me that rattles off all of the different phrases that the design team locked on to but it’s highly theatrical, there are some moments that are really kind of abstract and stylized like.  Some of the visual moments around Nowhere Mountain are going to just freak you out.

It’s something that you’ve never seen before at Strawdog, I guarantee it.

- Fin -