AMERICAN THEATRE | Releasing the Potential Vitality of ‘The Mild Chasers’

“Who’s going to put in writing the e-book to a Cloud Cult Mild Chasers sci-fi rock opera in order that I can design it?” tweeted Andrew Hungerford, inventive director of Know Theatre of Cincinnati, in early 2022, referring to a cosmic album launched in 2010 by the Minnesota indie rock band. Chicago-based director Jess Hutchinson, a fan of Cloud Cult in addition to of Know Theatre, noticed the tweet and was intrigued. Earlier than lengthy, Hungerford himself created a narrative a couple of teenage scientist, Nic, who lives along with her mother whereas her dad is away on a mission in deepest area. The ensuing music-theatre piece, The Mild Chasers, performs at Know, April 5-28, with course by Hutchinson and Hungerford and music course by Rob Stark.

“A few of Know’s greatest inventive successes fall into this class of journey play, sci-fi/fantasy, musical, or some mixture of these,” mentioned Hungerford in an interview with Hutchinson, citing Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, Brant Russell’s Bankers, and Justin Huertas’s Lizard Boy as examples. His script describes the setting for The Mild Chasers as “a liminal area that bounces forwards and backwards between a city in the course of Ohio and a spaceship on path to Proxima Centauri…The stage is filled with potential for transformation.”

Hutchinson appeared enthused by this potential. “I’ve been desirous about that area of chance,” she mentioned, noting the present’s partnership with the Cincinnati School-Conservatory of Music, whose college students fill lots of the present’s 10 roles and for whose college the present’s motion director, L. Lucía Duque, works. “Andrew is basically giving us quite a lot of room to find with the forged the bodily embodiment of the story, versus: ‘Here’s a desk you may actually solely use as a desk; don’t stand on it.’”

The album’s chief songwriter, Cloud Cult frontman Craig Minowa, was equally open to interpretation. The unique Mild Chasers file doesn’t have a transparent narrative, and even delineated characters, like, say, The Who’s Tommy, however as an alternative traces a type of pilgrimage to enlightenment. However Minowa signed off on the sci-fi idea, Hungerford mentioned, as a result of he was “actually moved by how we have been interacting with and constructing on the piece.”

Will he catch The Mild Chasers onstage? “That’s our hope,” mentioned Hungerford. “We open simply earlier than the photo voltaic eclipse, and Cincinnati might be near totality. So if Craig is touring together with his household round that point, he would possibly be capable of see it.”

Associated