A theatre group in Traverse City says its bringing a whole new experience to the stage.
The Mash Up Rock and Roll Musical group makes original productions out of a combination of pop culture and music to create shows they say you can't find anywhere else.
Previous shows include Bromeo vs. the Juliettes and The Little Prince and the Man from Mars.
WCMU's Tina Sawyer caught up with Lesley Tye, the co-founder and director of the theatre, to find out how their shows help audiences embrace their "weird."
This transcript has been edited for clarity and length.
Lesley Tye: So these are original shows that you can't see anywhere else in the world, but they are remixed from various popular cultures, so we usually take at least one musical group. Sometimes we take sort of like more of a musical genre, but at least one musical group, and then we mash that up with another popular story. So it's really about kind of taking popular culture and remixing it and saying something new with it. You know, I was doing theater here in Traverse City. I think there's a lot of really amazing theater makers here, but I didn't really see this happening. And so my my boyfriend at the time, who's now my husband, he's a rock'n'roll guy. And it just kind of made sense for us to try to create something together and to be able to create something completely new and original.
Tina Sawyer: So why bring this kind of art form to the area? Why do you think it belongs here in Northwest Michigan?
LT: I mean part of it I guess is because I don't really see anybody else doing it. So I think that, you know the kind of art that I want to make is the art that I want to see. And I think the other piece of it is. Bringing more experience to the local artist here was important to us once we became a nonprofit that we would pay all of the people involved, something they can't really quit their day jobs. It's not a full time thing, but we want to show them that their work that they do has value and we want to support artists in this area. So the other piece of it was to actually create...
sort of a professional experience for local people.
TS: Do they get to be working towards getting their union card too?
LT: No, nothing like that. We're not a professional theater. We're not an equity theater. We're still. We're sort of like in the middle. So we're sort of bridging the gap between a completely community theater, which is all volunteer, and that professional theater for experience that is going to be really unique too, because they get to create their characters. They write the shows and rewrite the shows for the people involved in it, so again, they're not really taking on a role that someone else has done before. They're really getting to create something from scratch.
TS: What kinds of things do you incorporate into the shows?
LT: Well, our next couple of shows that we have coming up, we have the Sound of Music, which is a parody of the Sound of Music, and it's basically the story of Maria as the top zombie killer. So it's the Sound of Music placed in the zombie apocalypse and she has to go and rescue the Von Trapped family who are stuck with the NAZ- zombies coming at them from all sides. It's got a rock'n'roll soundtrack, you know, a lot of fun, like Queen, Aerosmith, but it's still the Sound of Music at its heart. And it's still very much about the idea of tolerance and acceptance versus seeing people as different or seeing them as an other. We're also doing sort of a holiday theme show, which is Madonna- Nativity. So that's going to be Madonna music. But it's also talking about the holiday. And it's really at its heart, a more inclusive and sort of community driven idea. So it's about a troupe of actors that are trying to tell sort of an inclusive holiday story and at the same time, it's sort of falling apart. But it's really about how the community comes together to sort of save the story and tell it.
TS: Do you come up with all these stories or do you just sit around like a round table and come up with ideas?
LT: Yeah, sometimes we do. It really started with just sort of ideas that I would throw out. But anytime someone gives me a good idea, I have a long, long list. So actually Madonna-Nativity came from just someone who came to see one of our cabarets and was interested and was like ' You guys should do this!' So at this point, I will take any idea and see if we can run with it. It's really, really fun.
TS: And do you have a personal story that you can share that shows the importance of the group to the greater community?
LT: I think the thing for me that I really, really love is when I hear from parents of queer children who bring their teenagers to see it. And those kids are so excited because we always have a queer character involved. We always want to make sure that we're providing an opportunity for our queer performers or local. And so I hear often from parents who are like, you know, 'My kid came here and saw themselves up there on the stage, and it made them so happy.' We're really about bringing that joyful experience and then this is the reason why we do this!
