LOVE MY BAND

text by Ben Ferguson. inspired by Meredith Wilson's The Music Man. 

Once in the spring of 2011, I spent a drunken evening in the company of director Katherine Brook, playwright Dan O'Neil, and choreographer Katie Rose McLaughlin filming Ben Ferguson (of PigPen Theater) reenact his 7th grade production of The Music Man, in which he played Harold Hill. The resulting, conspicuously erratic 9 minute video became the ultimate inspiration for this reenactment of a reenactment, a lavish mini-spectacle that emulates the highly choreographic style of Broadway Musicals. For reenactors I enlisted the aid of those three witnesses, as well as other frequent collaborators, shuffling roles to accomodate the usual scheduling restrictions.

Little Theatre at Dixon Place, 2013. Co-directed with Katherine Brook. Sound by Erik Lawson. Performed by Dan O'Neil, Jessie Shelton, David Gould, Liza Birkenmeier, Katie Rose McLaughlin, Josh Smith, and David McGee