Musical (Not!)

The Striding Lion Ensemble is coming to this year’s Boulder International Fringe Festival with a singular aim: to overturn the current concept of musical theater in favor of something more up to date. Company spokeswoman Amanda Berg Wilson explains: “We are an interdisciplinary company in Chicago of choreographers, theater artists...

By Susan Froyd

August 19, 2010

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The Striding Lion Ensemble is coming to this year’s Boulder International Fringe Festival with a singular aim: to overturn the current concept of musical theater in favor of something more up to date. Company spokeswoman Amanda Berg Wilson explains: “We are an interdisciplinary company in Chicago of choreographers, theater artists and musicians, and we collaborated a few years ago on developing a piece with music that we recorded as a concept album, sort of a meditation on self-perception in a digital age and how we try to communicate ourselves to others online. For this show, we took the ten original rock songs we wrote and turned them into a live show. The result is not exactly a musical, although it most closely resembles a rock musical.”

That show, Birdsongs, opens tonight at 7 p.m. at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, 1750 13th Street, before continuing for four more performances through August 28. And it should rock: “We don’t use traditional choreography, and the book is collaboratively composed or, in some cases, actually directly lifted from online sources like Wikipedia,” Berg Wilson notes. “There are all these crazy forwarded e-mails and actual blogs that we imitated and borrowed from. Think of it as the next generation of musical theater.”

Tickets are $12 to $15 (or two-for-one tonight only), and group discounts are available at the door; for more information, visit www.boulderfringe.com.
Sun., Aug. 22, 7 p.m.; Mon., Aug. 23, 6 p.m.; Tue., Aug. 24, 9 p.m.; Fri., Aug. 27, 8:30 p.m.; Sat., Aug. 28, 5:30 p.m., 2010

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Susan Froyd started writing for Westword as the "Thrills" editor in 1992 and never quite left the fold. These days she still freelances for the paper in addition to walking her dogs, enjoying cheap ethnic food and reading voraciously. Sometimes she writes poetry.

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