To spark discussion, the Walker invites local artists and critics to write overnight reviews of our performances. The ongoing Re:View series shares a diverse array of independent voices and opinions; it doesn’t reflect the views or opinions of the Walker or its curators. Today, filmmaker-writer Justin Schell shares his perspective on Friday’s performance of FUTURITY by the Lisps. Agree or disagree? Feel free to share your thoughts in comments!

There’s a wonderful moment near the beginning of FUTURITY that finds mathematician Ada Lovelace drawing an outline of herself on a chalkboard filled with equations and formulas, as she shares her first correspondence with Julian Munro, a Civil War soldier with dreams of bringing about peace through creation rather than destruction. The moment poignantly epitomizes one of the many themes in the musical: the humanity of science, and the place of humanity within science.

These two main characters are played by Sammy Tunis and César Alvarez, two members of the Brooklyn-based band the Lisps, and Friday’s performance was just the second outside of its debut at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass. Over the past four years, the band and a number of the cast members played and workshopped sections of the musical at various bars, but the three-night performance run at the Walker was the first time the show had traveled. The music and lyrics were written by Alvarez, in collaboration with the Lisps, while 10 additional cast members (four of whom came from the Twin Cities and, incredibly, learned the show in a week) joined them on-stage.

To briefly summarize: The fictional Julian Munro, a Union soldier, begins a correspondence with the historically real Ada Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron, about his idea of a machine that can create peace, called the “Steam Brain.” His ideas are partially inspired by Lovelace’s work on Charles Babbage’s analytical machine, regarded by many as the first computer. Their correspondence and collaboration, not to mention their love, grows with more intensity as Julian and his regiment prepare for battle, while Ada must fight her own kind of battle with her mother (played by Anna Gottlieb), who only has one rule for her daughter after she took her away from the irresponsible Lord Byron: that she does not dream. Yet the Steam Brain, a machine that can solve all the problems of human strife, is perhaps the greatest dream of all.

There are so many themes running through FUTURITY: the reality and the consequences of technological progress, war and peace, the meaning and material of intelligence, the absolute necessity (and also potential dangers of) imagination, and the equally absolute necessity of love. It had multiple parallel metaphors of connection, be it rivers, railroads, or equations, but always with an aesthetic quality to it, a core of art and creativity within each of these, best expressed by Lovelace when she sings about the “song that equations sing.”

Each of the show’s 17 songs could use its own analysis for the way they weave together these themes, but what’s most remarkable about FUTURITY is that these ideas didn’t come across as the clichés they so often do (not just in musicals, but in so much American media), but neither did they come across as opaque, philosophical abstractions. It was certainly philosophical, but without becoming dogmatic or simplistic in its view of technology, avoiding the good/evil binary of, say, Koyaanisqatsi. It was utopian, but without being fanciful or too hippie. There was an immediacy and a sincerity to both the reality of these questions, but also their stakes, and yet the show offered no easy answers.

The show’s set seemed to mirror the complexity of these questions. Every square inch of the McGuire stage was covered. While some shows I’ve seen approximated this amount of gear, it’s usually just on the floor, and it’s usually electronic, things like instruments at rest and laptops and cords and pedals. FUTURITY, however, took up most of the stage’s space vertically. The centerpiece was the “Steam Brain,” which had at its core a steampunk Neil Peart drum set designed and played with machine-like precision and Animal-like joy by the Lisps’ Eric Farber. While not the dimensions of the Steam Brain described in the show (80 feet tall, 100 yards around, and heavy as a ton), it was easily the biggest thing I’ve ever seen on the McGuire stage.  Beyond the standard drums and cymbals, there were things like buckets, film reels, light bulbs, chains, pulleys, radiator grills, all sorts of gears, bells, and even a trombone slide attached. There was no added digital sound, and nothing electronic on-stage except for pickups and microphones. (At one point, Milia Ayache, who played the soldier Miles, took a swig of water from a Mason jar, which could have equally functioned as part of the Steam Brain set.)

There’s so much more to be said about FUTURITY. If you missed the Walker’s performances, you can still get a flavor of the piece: the band is going to release an album of the musical (funded with a successful Kickstarter last year).

In a recent interview, the Lisps spoke at length “in defense of the musical” and about the background for their work FUTURITY, currently playing at Walker. Bandmates César Alvarez, Sammy Tunis, and Eric Farber weigh in on the roles venues have played, why FUTURITY is an “outsider musical,” and how the performance helps to create peace.

Jesse Leaneagh

I read that it took four years to develop FUTURITY. Can you talk a bit about that process, from idea germination to completion?

César Alvarez

It started as an idea that percolated for a bit before we put it before an audience for my master’s thesis at Bard. That was in the summer of 2008, and at that point the idea had been around for almost a year. It had been a slow process of a lot of research and writing songs. And after I finished at Bard, we had gotten a call from this club, the Zipper Factory, in New York, and they had wanted us to play a show, so I told them, “We have a musical, can we play our musical?”  They said, “Sure, that sounds great.” [laughs]

So really our first workshop was just a gig, which is the beginning of the non-traditional development of the show. We sort of side-stepped a lot of what people normally do when they’re workshopping musicals, in terms of table reads and closed workshops. We were out in the open with it from the very beginning. And [Senior Curator for Performing Arts] Philip [Bither] at the Walker saw that very first workshop, which was really a rag-tag…

Sammy Tunis

It wasn’t! Well, it was rag-tag, but it was pretty much a fully staged show. We rehearsed for weeks, and there was choreography, and it was kind of a big show. It wasn’t just that we showed up…

Alvarez

There was just no budget.

Tunis

Yeah, there was no budget. [laughs]

Alvarez

So it had a bit of that community theater vibe, but at the same time it had these complicated ideas about science and a sort-of sophisticated plot. So I think Philip really saw it as some sort of bizarre performance art at that stage, which I think was right on. As it kept moving, we started doing more concert versions and workshops, we did a lot of them at Joe’s Pub, which is a sort of cabaret-rock venue in New York, and as more people got involved we got our director Sarah Benson involved, and then Molly Rice the co-book writer, we did a more proper workshop with costumes and we raised some money—and that was at HERE Arts Center—and that’s when American Repertory Theater (ART) saw it and said we really want to bring this to our venue, which is a hybrid theater-club venue. So what was cool is that for the development of it, we were always just sharing it with our friends and family and our fans and out in the open about how it was developing. It was fun because a lot of people kind of just hitched onto the project along the way.

Leaneagh

So have the venues played a role at all in changing the project, from Joe’s Pub to ART?

Tunis

I think the biggest change has been at the Oberon [at ART] because it is such a multi-layered space. There’s a stage and then there’s a band stage, there’s an upper level and a downstairs level; you’re constantly moving when you see the show at the Oberon. We’ve always tailored the show to the space we’re in. What we did at Joe’s Pub was basically just a concert, but then, say, at Ars Nova, which is a lot bigger, we did a fully staged production. We’ve even staged this show at a bar in Louisville, Kentucky.  I think part of why this show has been so successful is that we can stage it almost anywhere and in any sort of way. We can do a fully-staged production or just a concert or something in between.

Alvarez

We’ve never done this show at a normal proscenium theater. The Walker will be the first time we do that, which is funny, because it’s a contemporary art center, and it has a reputation for being so experimental, but then as we come to Walker we’re trying to figure out “how do we put this show in a normal theater space?” because we’ve never done that [laughs].

Leaneagh

I was curious about Annie-B Parson’s role in the project and what it was like working with her because she was just at the Walker in November for the Big Dance Theater show Supernatural Wife.

Alvarez

The way this musical started was that it’s a musical made by people who don’t make musicals.  And as we got more people on the creative team, we wanted to keep that feeling, and I think Sarah Benson,  who is the artistic director of Soho Rep, is the perfect example of that. She’s a great and successful director who admittedly has never directed a musical [laughs]. When she wanted to work with Annie-B Parson I think it was that same idea; she’s an amazing choreographer who does tons of theatrical work, but isn’t someone who choreographs musicals per se. It’s the same with Emily Orling, our production designer, who came up with the whole visual language for the piece. She’s a visual artist not a set designer. It’s actually a huge part of how we’ve tried to keep the feeling of this piece as an outsider musical, which is what allows audience members of all different stripes to come to it and feel that they can enter into this piece even if they’re not familiar with tons of musicals. Because it was really made for them, in a way.

Eric Farber

I think the word “outsider” is right. I’ve approached building these sonic sculptures, the kinetic percussion machines, from a completely uneducated and uninformed place… trying to tinker and find my way through and going on instinct. A lot of what the piece is about, and how the piece got raised, was really just on instinct and intuition. Following your gut always reveals something more pure and primitive then the standard, polished, commercial musical.

Alvarez

Also it links to the content of the musical itself, which is about someone trying to invent something who is totally ill-equipped to invent it. The piece is about imagination and the value of that attempt. Even though Julian has no resources to build a steam-powered artificial intelligence, there’s something intrinsically powerful and valuable about his impulse to do that.  That’s the whole point of the piece, calculating the cost of war in imagination, and understanding the value of looking for the impossible. When we have outsiders working on this musical it’s the same process. And it’s the same valuation of the power of the imagination.

Leaneagh

I’ve read a little bit about the literary influences for the piece,  William Gibson’s novel The Difference Engine, which features FUTURITY character Ada Lovelace. But the utopian, sci-fi premise of FUTURITY also reminds me a bit of one of my favorite novels, Gob’s Grief by Chris Adrian. Do you know that book?

Alvarez

I don’t know it.

Leaneagh

It’s really great; it’s about this Civil War veteran who tries to build a machine to bring back all the Civil War dead. You should check it out. Walt Whitman is a character in the novel. It’s a similar blend of historical magical realism.

Alvarez

Well, Walt Whitman was a resource for this piece because he was a poet who went to war, who went and served in medical units, and he experienced as a poet the horror of the Civil War and wrote about it. And then his brother was a veteran—I think he died—and for some of Julian’s letters we used Walt Whitman’s brother’s letters as a reference.

To look at what Walt Whitman wrote about the Civil War, it gives you goosebumps. To think about one of the greatest American poets witnessing that horror and then how that process plays out in his mind is definitely interesting and relevant to this piece.

Leaneagh

Going back to Eric, and talking about a sort of outsider approach, how did the percussive brain evolve through different performances and different places, and are you still adding to the brain?

Farber

Totally. I’ve got a pile of things in my basement that are sort of half-done or don’t quite fit. The exciting thing about this project is that things break and I discover new things and I’m always looking for new things. And actually since we’ve been at ART, I’ve been playing that stuff so much through rehearsals and shows. It’s gotten a lot of beatings. A lot of wear and tear. I’ve had to look for new stuff over the past weeks, and that’s been exciting. Every day I have to come into the theater and make sure all the nuts and bolts are tightened and everything is in working order. As far as the development of the project over the course of the last few years, the impetus for building the machine and its sort of mechanical assemblages, it really came from the place logistically of trying to play that stuff as one person. I found that some things sound better with a knitting needle, some things sound better with a hammer. All the while I just want to be holding my drum sticks because at the center of it is simply a traditional drum set. Building the machine came from trying to mount the correct implement with each individual piece. Instead of picking up a metal rod to scrape a tractor seat, I built a handle for it, a hand-cranked handle out of an old meat grinder. So I can keep holding onto my drumsticks and do that quickly. I’ve used different sorts of pulleys and rope mechanisms to expedite the performance so I don’t have to worry about the implement and I can think in real time.

Alvarez

And then what’s exciting is you see Eric do it and it looks like someone is operating a machine. It’s a choreography of a mechanism.

Farber

I worked in collaboration over the summer with ART’s scene shop to build four larger pieces that—for the ART production—are scattered around the room. One thing that’s exciting is we’ve opened up the pre-show to allow theater-goers to actually play them, which creates a dialogue with them about the piece and imagination. It gets their juices flowing. Me and two other cast members are always out there during pre-show, and a lot of people come up to me and ask about where the pieces come from and ask me to show them how it works. I feel like that has been one of the most wonderful things about this production, getting to talk to people before the show about it.

A lot of times people will come up to me and say, “What does this thing do?” And I’ll say, “Oh, it creates peace!” [Laughs] People look at me totally perplexed, like, this doesn’t create peace, and I’ll say “Try it! It will change your life.” And I’ll say it with utter conviction and it’s actually something I believe. Thinking about the possibilities of things, instead of wasting things away and letting them die—I’m thinking about the way that technology develops and grows obsolete—I think that thinking about the possibility of obsolete technology rather than just discarding it for the next new greatest thing, having that eye towards the world can actually change our perspective and the ways we interact with the contents of our world. It can lead towards sustainability.

I’ve talked with a lot of younger kids, we’ve done a couple school groups, 7^th and 8^th graders, it gets them thinking about where their iPhone comes from, what the possibilities are of developing technologies in the future that have an eye towards re-purposing and rethinking objects and our relationship to them, so that’s exciting.

Leaneagh

And it sounds like maybe the whole approach of FUTURITY is rethinking the obsolescence of the musical, or what it means for a band to re-purpose it and not let it die and have it somehow be relevant again.

Alvarez

Yeah, and everything in the piece is a metaphor for the piece in a way. The piece itself is a machine that creates peace. The piece itself is a dialogue about the meanings, the cost, and the reasons for war, and our relationship to that vis à vis technology.  And war has always had an intimate relationship with technology, and the question becomes: how can we start building our relationship with technology around peace? And around communication and understanding with one another? I have lofty ideas about music, and beyond that art and culture, as sort of machines that create peace. Music is the opposite of war. It’s an organization and vibration of harmony. It creates harmoniousness in the world. And that’s the kind of higher value of the piece, to elevate peoples’ ideas about who they are and their relationship to the world. I think the point of all art in a way, is to lift the human spirit.

One of the joyous — and sometimes stressful — things about curating performance for the Walker is that our institution’s mission doesn’t just allow us to take artistic chances but actually requires us to do so.  With a stated commitment to new artistic forms and work that pushes dance , performance or music in new directions, we are often in the role of helping to translate and interpret work that might not always be easily to read on one’s own.

But sometimes we choose to focus this same impulse on innately more accessible and even commercial art forms, like the American musical or indie rock (for lack of a better term). The results can be just as surprising or as innovative as our work in experimental music or theater; it is just working within a different tradition.

The Steam-Brain: an "omnipotent steam-powered artificial intelligence" onstage at Walker

Two and a half years ago, at the strong recommendation of former Walker Director Kathy Halbreich and visual artist Paul Chan, I carved out two hours at the insanely jam-packed Association for Performing Arts Presenters conference in New York to head to a small theater/club on the far west side called the Zipper Factory to catch a DIY music-theater work with the odd title of FUTURITY by a Brooklyn indie-folk/rock/Americana band named the Lisps. The music, the youthful spirit, the rabid fan/crowd response, the unlikely dense ideas embedded in the work, the moments of noise and musical chaos, even the poignant ending, all captured me and set me on a long journey of helping this band see its first theater work to the next level.

A flow of e-mails and various meetings and concert showings of the work unfolded and I agreed to have the Walker help commission the work’s further development. Neither of us knew exactly how we would get there, but Cesar Alvarez (leader of the Lisps) and I agreed that this work should be on the Walker’s 2011-2012 season.

The Lisps' Cesar Alvarez

As months turned into years, exciting things began to happen. Visionary, generous British born director Sarah Benson (and artistic director of Soho Rep in NYC) came on board to direct the work. Then American Repertory Theater (ART) in Cambridge, a semi-classic theater with an edge and adventurous spirit, joined in as lead producer. Just six months ago friend and remarkably creative choreographer/director Annie-B Parson (Big Dance Theatre) signed on to create the choreography.  Many other talented people — writers, designers, stage managers, singers, performers — signed up or were hired by ART.

Six weeks ago, I flew out  for the official press opening for FUTURITY, which now had such an unlikely cast of collaborators and institutional partners that it  was written up nationally in  American Theater magazine. It was a great leap of faith by ART, which applied its theater creation know-how to the inspired DIY civil war vaudvillians rock musicial. Now it has landed on our doorstep and Minnesotans only have three opportunities (April 26–28) to see it, before it continues what is sure to be a long future life.

Listen to “Steam Brain,” from FUTURITY. Purchase tickets to FUTURITY.