Stalker: The Musical
In the spirit of dark comedies like Urinetown and Bat Boy, Stalker: The Musical addresses real life questions with a playful smirk and a nod (or maybe a fervent head shake) towards farce. With a name like Stalker: The Musical and the setting of a stark, dystopian future, co-creator David Russell admits that "there is no way we could create this heightened reality without the show taking some very serious inroads towards farce and in some cases, silliness. We never wanted the reality of stalking - which is a horrible thing in our world, to take away from the themes of the show. So for us, stalking is a silly thing, a musical theatre ‘technique’ used to paint a picture of a world where we can set our show."
Beginning its journey halfway across the world (Australia, the homeland of the show's creators), the show ran a series of workshops in Sydney in 2014 before landing at the 2015 New York International Fringe Festival. "The Fringe experience was invaluable for us shaping exactly where we wanted the show to go. It’s a very different show now: much tighter, much better," says Russell. When asked what the endgame was for Stalker's journey, he says that "we would like to see the show make it to an off-Broadway run at some point, but who knows what the future holds" and for now, looking ahead to the next few weeks at CMTF, "I believe we’ve struck the right balance between funny and meaningful."
In a dystopian world, there is one rule above all - look but don’t touch. The concept of love has been completely outlawed, banished and eradicated, and as a result, the citizens' only option is an arrangement referred to as ‘stalking’: looking to their hearts content, but no touching - under strict penalty. Jay has been paying too much attention to one particular girl, Ava, and the townsfolk are getting nervous. When a mysterious stranger arrives on the scene and explains to Jay that what he is feeling has a name - ‘love’, Jay’s world is turned upside down and, professing his love to Ava, he determines to find a way out of the town so that they can be together. What follows is a treatise on human connection, the perils and the possibilities, the disasters and the delights. Book and Lyrics by David Russell and Alex Giles, Music by Andy Peterson, presented by RPG Productions.
Check out the Performance Dates page on the 2016 CMTF Blog to find the performance times for Stalker: The Musical, and visit cmtf.org for more information and tickets. To preview some of the music of Stalker: The Musical, visit www.stalkerthemusical.com/media.
