#@stillunsteady

[jackie-talks-about-starkid]

Starship (Rewatch #4, 9/30/2020)

YouTube publish date: April 30, 2011

Number of views on date of rewatch: 4,171, 828

Original Performance Run: February 11-23, 2011 at the Hoover-Leppen Theatre in Chicago

Ticket price: $25

Director: Matt Lang

Music and Lyrics: Darren Criss

Book: Brian Holden, Matt Lang, Nick Lang, and Joe Walker

Cast album price and availability: $8.91 on Amazon and iTunes

     Release date: April 29, 2011

Parody or original: original content, inspired by Starship Troopers, The Little Mermaid, and Alien

Main cast and characters:

Bug - Joey Richter

February - Denise Donovan

Commander Up - Joe Walker

Taz/Buggette - Lauren Lopez

Tootsie Noodles/Pincer - Dylan Saunders

Mega-Girl - Meredith Stepien

Junior - Brian Holden

Roach - Brant Cox

Specs - Julia Albain

Krayonder - Joe Moses

Musical numbers

Act I

“I Wanna Be” Characters: Bug, Roach, and Ensemble (playing inhabitants of the Bug World)

“Get Back Up” Characters: Taz, Up, and Starship Rangers

“Life” Characters: Bug

“Hideous Creatures” Characters: Starship Rangers and Bugs

“Kick It Up A Notch” Characters: Pincer, The Mosquitoes, and Bug

“Status Quo” Characters: Bug

Act II

“The Way I Do” Characters: Tootsie Noodles, Mega-Girl, February, and Bug

“Beauty” Characters: Roach and Bugs

“Kick It Up A Notch (Reprise)” Characters: Junior

“Beauty” Characters: Company

Notable Notes:

This production won the 2011 “Best New Work” award from BroadwayWorld’s Chicago theatre awards

Starship is Starkid’s first show that they produced independently from the University of Michigan! The show opened in Chicago, where the following few shows were produced before a majority of the most active members moved to Los Angeles prior to The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals, which opened in 2018

StarKid had their own short segment on MTV that highlighted certain aspects of the production such as Criss’ music and the puppetry (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlnIXIGrjVg). At that point in time, Darren Criss was already a television favorite due to his role as Blaine Anderson on Glee, who joined the cast during its second season

The show’s cast album debuted at number one on Billboard’s Top Cast Albums within three days of its release and at the 134th spot during that week’s Billboard’s Top 200 chart (x)

The opening sequence features cameos from other StarKid members such as Chris Allen, Tyler Brunsman, Richard Campbell, Britney Coleman, Arielle Goldman, Devin Lytle, Lily Marks, Nicholas Joseph Strauss-Matathia, and Brian Rosenthal.The same sequence was narrated by actor Bob Joles (AKA Man Ray in Spongebob Squarepants)

***Fun Facts provided by Abby:

Nick and Dylan think the worst StarKid song is ‘Hideous Creatures’

During a rehearsal, Joey told Nick that he thought the choreography for ‘Beauty’ was boring. Then Nick asked him, “Do you want to choreograph the number?" and then walked out of the room.

There was a theoretical sequel to Starship in which Taz and Up arrest Spaceclaw but get injured by an explosion. Up ends up in the hospital because of his injuries, and while Taz waits for him to heal, she has flashbacks of when they first met and the missions they went on together (Taz’s quinceañera, etc.)

Lauren: I'd like to imagine that Taz has that same hairstyle just in a big quinceañera dress

Once during rehearsal, they were all in a bad mood during ‘Beauty’. Darren wanted to surprise the cast with a visit, so he burst into the theatre singing the song and was just met by silence

At LeakyCon 2014 on Orlando, StarKid were invited as guests and performed a staged reading of a one-act sequel to Starship called Starship: Requiem.

Official synopsis: The story follows the adventures of Mega-Girl the robot and her half-witted Starship Ranger husband. The newlyweds are sucked into a black hole of trouble when they go to visit Mega-Girl’s human-hating family, including her overbearing mother-unit, her jealous sister-unit and the return of her hunky ex-boyfriend-unit. (x)

Cultural Context: 2011

The production’s MTV segment aired a little over a week after Glee’s “Original Song” episode, which featured Kurt and Blaine’s long-awaited first kiss [rip Pavarotti]

Prince William and Kate Middleton get married

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 premieres on July 15th

Beyoncé announces her pregnancy during her performance at the MTV Video Music Awards

“Friday” by Rebecca Black gets released in March

In early May, President Obama announces that Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces

New York becomes the sixth state to legalize same-sex marriage on June 24th

The 9/11 Memorial Museum opens to the public on the tenth anniversary of the attacks

Content Analysis:

During my time on social media, I have found that Starship is one of the StarKid shows that gets discussed the least. Up until the show’s debut in StarKid’s history, the only shows they’ve done were AVPM and AVPS, both major viral hits, and MAMD, which reached popularity partly because it was released after StarKid became known for AVPM. Coming off of their great and unexpected successes with these productions, one would think that there would be a bigger fandom for Starship. It’s their second show that is based on original content rather than being a parody, and the production quality is the strongest in their repertoire, considering the funds they gained from their album sales for MAMD and their growing merchandise sales for their Potter musical series.

Personally, it’s one of my favorite StarKid shows because of the production quality and because the performances are so strong. Joey Richter makes a perfect leading man, and seeing how his general abilities as a performer have grown since MAMD has been delightful. His vocal range got stronger and more pronounced and he has a very confident stage presence, especially since Starship was StarKid’s first production independent of the University of Michigan’s monetary assistance and performance space. Lauren Lopez and Dylan Saunders do such an incredible job at playing two completely different characters themselves within the same show. Saunders plays Tootsie Noodles, a lovable idiot with a heart of gold who falls in love with a robot of all things, while also playing Pincer, the villainous instigator of the plot. Lopez has a similar about-face in character portrayal. She plays Buggette, a bug who’s in a helpless one-sided romantic relationship with Bug, and then two seconds later Lopez transforms into Taz, a kickass Latina Starship Ranger with excellent comedic presence and the undisputed leader of the group before Up regains his confidence as commander.

Starship is very unique in that about half of the characters in the show are portrayed by puppets, which themselves are incredibly designed, but unlike other productions that use puppets, they do not detract from the actor’s performance of the character. StarKid did a very good job in ensuring that the puppets are not a gimmick, but rather a compliment, to their individual actor’s portrayal of the character. All actors who play puppet roles do such a great job of vocalizing their character that, despite the design of the puppet not having the ability to change facial features, make the puppets feel so alive that it’s almost like watching a live-action animated movie (the good kind we’ve yet to experience, not the Disney kind). If there is any one thing that Starship represents for the company as a whole, it’s that character creation and embodiment make up the heartblood of the performances. Aside from the vocal performances, the facial expressions and physicality of the performances add so much to the puppetry performances, even when the focus on the character isn’t their physical representation but their dialogue and place in the plot. Regardless of whether or not the recording is emphasizing the puppet itself during a scene, the actor controlling the puppet is using perfect facial expressions and has matching body language with the puppet, which not only helps the actor stay in character, but gives more life to the puppet itself.

While I am eternally grateful that StarKid to this day ensures that their musical productions are put on YouTube for free, there are two very clear downsides that make themselves especially present in the recording. One is that, unlike in live theatre where any audience member can choose who and what to look at onstage at any given time, the camera is the one dictating what each audience member can focus on. Generally speaking, that isn’t too much of a detriment as most of the shots StarKid uses tend to showcase the most important characters during each scene, which any audience member would do if they were to attend a production live, but because StarKid members are so adept at character performance, it really makes me wish that I can look more at the ensemble’s performances during group scenes, or secondary character’s reactions during smaller scenes in which their character may not be the main focus.

Another thing was the general editing style. Though it did not necessarily take away anything from the performance itself or make watching the recording any less enjoyable, there were some editing choices that I felt were too distracting for what the scene called for in the show. For example, when Crayonder mentions to Taz that he thinks that Commander Up has “gone soft” since the injury he sustained in the Robot War, twice does the camera pause on his face and a record scratch and ‘booooo’ track is heard overlaid onto the scene. I understand the comedic nature of that bit in retrospect, but for a viewer, regardless of whether or not they are watching the show for the first time, it’s very distracting and forcibly shifts the audience’s focus on the story and the characters to a one-off joke. For a first-time viewer, that editing choice especially does not have as much impact as it does for a recurring viewer, as at that point in the story, the audience is only just being introduced to the characters and has no personal connection to Up and his backstory, making the effect of the joke less successful. As well, throughout the recording, and during the first act in particular, the show has a lot of quick and experimental cuts in the frame that I feel don’t allow the audience to sit enough with the action and the performance happening onstage, instead making the audience pay more attention to quick facial gestures rather than allowing the audience to take in the performance of an individual actor or an entire scene as a whole. Overall, the editing just reminds me that I am watching this beautifully done live-performance through a screen rather than being there for the performance in person, and lessens the potential impact of the recording as a whole.

Regardless of the editing, Starship still has some of the best character performances and musical numbers in StarKid’s production history. One that really stood out for me during this rewatch was Denise Donovan’s portrayal of February. Her character gets introduced as a classic ditzy character who initially doesn’t have a lot of agency in the story, but through good writing and likable performance, grows into the most sympathetic and dynamic character in the show. Donovan’s performance makes February more human than the trope she represents, and plays off her character so well that her jokes make her more endearing than a throw-away character that’s used just for laughs and a love-interest. Starkid tends to do this with a lot of the trope-y roles that they write for their productions . The writing and the direction have a very unique way of taking seemingly predictable, one-dimensional characters and fleshing them out into entire human beings with backstories and arcs, making their comedic impact all the more enjoyable because the audience genuinely likes them.

#@TeamStarkid #for my independent study #starship #team starkid #starkid productions #starkid musicals #starkid #musical theatre #musicals #theatre #@stillunsteady #thank you!

[jackie-talks-about-starkid]

Holy Musical B@man! (Rewatch #5, 10/6/2020)

YouTube publish date: April 13, 2012

Number of views on date of rewatch: 2, 128, 328

Original Performance Run: March 22-25, 2012 at Chicago’s Hoover-Leppen Theatre

Ticket price: Free by lottery [x]

Director: Matt Lang and Nick Lang

Music and Lyrics: Nick Gage and Scott Lamps

Book: Matt Lang and Nick Lang

Cast album price and availability: Released April 13, 2012      “That’s What I Call Starkid!, Vol. 2” on iTunes $9.99 *features most songs      “Holy Musical B@man!” on Bandcamp for no minimum price *features two songs: ‘Holy Musical B@man!’ and ‘Robin Sucks!’ [x]

Parody or original: parody, babey!

Main cast and characters:

Batman/Bruce Wayne - Joe Walker

Robin - Nick Lang

Superman/Clark Kent - Brian Holden

Alfred - Chris Allen

Sweet Tooth - Jeff Blim

Commissioner Gordon - Lauren Lopez

Vicki Vale - Julia Albain

Musical numbers

Act I

“Holy Musical B@man” Characters: Narrator and Company

“Dark, Sad, Lonely, Knight” Characters: Alfred, Batman, Superman, Green Lantern, and Company

“Rogues Are We” Characters: The Penguin, Poison Ivy, Catwoman, Scarecrow, The Riddler, and Mr. Freeze

“Rogues Are We (Reprise)” Characters: Sweet Tooth, Evil Mother Goose, Evil Sherlock Holmes, Evil King Arthur, Evil Huckleberry Finn The Penguin, Poison Ivy, Catwoman, Scarecrow, The Riddler, and Mr. Freeze

“Dynamic Duet” Characters: Batman, Robin, and Company

Act II

“Robin Sucks” Characters: Ensemble

“The American Way” Characters: Superman, Batman, Sweet Tooth, and Company

“To Be A Man” Characters: Batman and Superman

“Super Friends” Characters:  Batman, Superman, Robin, Spider-Man, Green Lantern, and Company

Notable Notes:

“That’s What I Call Starkid” and the “Holy Musical B@man” two-song album are the last cast recordings from StarKid available on Bandcamp

     *Fun facts provided by Abby:

Matt and Nick were having difficulty writing Joker’s character so they cut Joker out of the show and replaced him with a made-up character, Sweet Tooth. They later found out that Sweet Tooth was an actual Batman villain

“Calendar Man, your days are numbered” was a line of dialogue that Matt Lang dreamed about and then put in the show

Jeff Blim only got about 8 out of 10 candy gags correct during any given performance, so the recorded production edited together multiple nights of his performances so that they were all be right for the released production

Cultural Context: 2012

The first Hunger Games movies opened in theaters and the last Twilight movie gets released

So does The Avengers!

StarKid’s second tour, ‘Apocolyptour’, begins a month after the YouTube release of HMB!

Whitney Houston is found dead in Los Angeles on February 11

On May 9, Obama becomes the first president to vocalize his support for gay marriage in the United States

Content Analysis:

Holy Musical B@man! has a very solid plot, enjoyable musical numbers, and great characterization, which makes the overall performance very entertaining. However, one of the theatrical traits that it lacks is a solid voice and consistent tone from the book. There are moments when I found myself unable to stop laughing, such as Robin and Batman’s duet, ‘Dynamic Duo’, or any time Lauren Lopez as Commissioner Gordon talks, but in between very strong scenes and numbers were moment of dialogue that felt rushed or lacked the comedic depth that StarKid usually has in their productions.

The character that really stood out for me was Jeff Blim’s StarKid debut character, Sweet Tooth. Blim has very strong facial expressions and a unique vocality to this specific character that really personifies the classic superhero villain that comic books, especially DC, is known for. The offstage death of The Joker at the beginning of the show subverts the expectation the audience has for a Batman parody but uses Blim’s character's manic personality and very clever candy puns to balance out Batman’s childish broodiness that Joe Walker plays so well.

Nick Lang as Robin was perfect casting. The natural size difference between him and Walker’s Batman made each scene with them, whether it’s comedic or dramatic, all the more effective because of the difference in physicality and Lang’s kind of British/Transatlantic emphasis he puts into the character’s voice just works for his comedic performance. The scene in which Batman and Robin meet for the first time is my personal favorite scene and a comedic standout moment in the show that contains the perfect balance of parody and sincerity.

Generally, the physical gags of the show are also reliably and consistently funny, as they make fun of the superhero genre for both comic books and movies while heightening the comedic aspects because of the performances deliberate lack of special effects to make certain moments or action sequences more realistic. One example is whenever Superman files-rather than being extra and having Brian Holden (who makes a very funny Superman, by the way) actually fly using a rigging system or using lighting and sound effects to create the stage illusion that he’s actually flying, he’s just carried by a stagehand dressed in all black while holding himself up in a Superman pose which is way funnier than it should be, but works so well because himself and the other actors plays off the gag so well. As well, the fighting sequences are intentionally underplayed or themselves a parody of the traditional high-action, realistic movie sequence fighting that the audience has grown accustomed to, especially from Batman’s character who relies only on his physical fighting ability and super-realistic weaponry.

Before the show fully began its performance, I feel like the light-hearted parody of the tone’s show was communicated very successfully by Corey Lubowich’s set design. The minimalist set pieces were very practical for such a small performance space and stylistically fit in with every scene that they were present in, making them perfect for multifunctional use and fast scene changes. The stylistic background is also very well done, as it’s not too simplistic to not have an effect and honors the traditional comic book/early 1960s superhero tv show feel while also not being too distracting. The split levels of the stage are also great for both dramatic and comedic effect, and it adds depth to the physical performance while also strengthening the effect of certain physical gags throughout the show.

Though this particular production does not have the strongest book in StarKid’s repertoire, I feel like the performances and the overall tone of the show definitely succeed in making this production a distinctly StarKid show. As a long-time StarKid fan, I can see elements of the original AVPM-era vibes of the performance, can compare the growth of the performance quality and production quality of their work from their earlier University of Michigan based shows, and witness the seeds of the future production characteristics seen in their more recent works such as The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals and Black Friday. I feel like if I were to periodize certain StarKid eras, Holy Musical B@man! would be the beginning of an age reminiscent of Disney’s experimental era. While HMB isn’t a blockbuster musical, so to speak, the fact that this show was the second of their independent shows away from U of M lets the audience see how they began to grow as a production company who has a very distinctive, cult-classic voice in the theatre community.

#@TeamStarkid #for my independent study #holy musical b@man #I will die defending the intellectual validity of musical theatre and of starkid specifically #hmb! #hmb #team starkid #starkid productions #starkid musicals #starkid #@stillunsteady #thanks abby!!! #musical theatre #musicals #theatre