WILLY NILLY Begins Its Run At FringeNYC On 8/14
By: Reynard Loki Aug. 06, 2009
Piper McKenzie presents the world premiere of Trav S.D.’s Willy Nilly, a Musical Exploitation of the Most Far Out Cult Murders of the Psychedelic Era in the 2009 New York International Fringe Festival.
August, 2009 marks the 40th anniversary of the Tate-Labianca Murders, committed by the psychedelic hippie cult commonly known as the Manson Family. In observance of that date (and of the 10th anniversary of their first FringeNYC production), Piper McKenzie is presenting the World Premiere of Trav S.D.’s Willy Nilly: A Musical Exploitation of the Most Far Out Cult Murders of the 1960s. Charles Manson meets Mad Magazine in this tasteless rock’n’roll spoof about a filthy faux-Messiah, his cult of wanton women, and high Hollywood murder. With a raucous score, gratuitous nudity, acid freakouts, excessive gore, cruel stereotypes and slapstick misogyny, consider this fictionalized musical satire the anti-Hair. The cast includes the production’s playwright/songwriter Trav S.D. (No Applause, Just Throw Money; House of Trash), co-producer Hope Cartelli (Babylon Babylon; John Goldfarb, Please Come Home), Becky Byers, Maggie Cino, Michael Criscuolo, Betsy Head, Daryl Lathon (member AEA), Rich Lovejoy, Mateo Moreno, Esther Silberstein, Adam Swiderski, and Elizabeth Hope Williams, and introduces Avery Pearson as the Manson-inspired title character. Live music will be provided by The Four Hoarses, a new psychedelic band featuring Derek Davidson (The Electric Mess, ZZ Top cover band Cheap SunglasseZZ), Oweinama Biu (Madam Robot, The Lust Brigade and The Electric Mess), Darro “Sparkie” Sandler and Chris Talsness (formerly of The Electric Mess and Flaming Fire).Sun 8/16 at 8:30pm
Fri 8/21 at 11pm
Sat 8/22 at 4:45pm
Sat 8/29 at 8pmTickets will be available beginning at 12:01am on Friday, July 24by visiting www.fringenyc.org or calling 866.468.7619. Piper McKenzie made its New York debut in FringeNYC with 1999’s The Walking in Space Show. In the intervening decade, founders and Artistic Directors Hope Cartelli and Jeff Lewonczyk have been creating theater that is “brazenly experimental, unapologetically populist, and surprisingly endearing” (indietheater.org). Their unique aesthetic of genre love, unsettling comedy, physical storytelling and cultural mythology (pop and otherwise) have yielded such recent works as The Granduncle Quadrilogy, Babylon Babylon and Macbeth Without Words, all of which appeared at The Brick Theater in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. They are both Associate Directors of The Brick and were collaborators on the award-winning 2007 FringeNYC musical hit John Goldfarb, Please Come Home, with a book by William Peter Blatty (The Exorcist), for which Jeff directed and Hope originated the role of Svetlana.
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