Burning Man, that annual back-country Bachanalia that has given new meaning to high desert, is heading for the bright lights of Broadway.
Maybe.
First, the backers of Burning Man: The Musical need to raise $20,000 on crowdfunding site Indiegogo where they ve just posted a hilarious 5:09-minute trailer featuring two of the songs they ve penned so far.
Their website describes the work-in-progress as:
The writers have plenty of fodder: the once decidedly counter-cultural love-fest, launched in 1986 on San Francisco s Baker Beach before moving to the playa of Black Rock Desert 120 miles north of Reno, now bears the scars of being at times nearly conventional and – god forbid! – tame. While originally designed as a mass collective experiment in community, artistic celebration and radical subsistence living if even for a week each September, the festival has been increasingly co-oped by a new generation of Burners, most famously the techies of San Francisco and Silicon Valley led by the likes of Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, as well as their chairman Eric Schmidt .
So it s no surprise that the opening lines of the opening scene in the trailer features this little ditty, sung by the leading actor Joe (played by Travis Kent):
Oh, I want to seize the day with Eric Schmidt, Larry and Sergey.
Here s a condensed version of the plot:
Here are few other choice tidbits from the score and the opening number, apparently called What have you heard about Burning Man?
Burning Man reached its peak in 09, now the techies come to plug and play while they scowl and don t participate
According to the festival s official site, Burning Man 2015 takes place August 30 – September 7, 2015 in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada. Participants join in the effort to co-create Black Rock City, a temporary metropolis dedicated to art and community.
But Burning Man: The Musical won t be ready for prime time as quickly as the real thing. The musical creators (Directed by Kyle Fasanella, music by Gene Black, lyrics and book by Matt Werner) did not respond to an email request for comment. But their site lays out their lofty goals:
For a little taste of what may be coming soon to an off-Broadway stage near you, check out the trailer:
Credit: Burning Man: The Musical
Photo: A 4-foot wooden figure known as The Man burns in the Black Rock Desert at the close of the Burning Man festival Saturday, Sept. 1, 2007, on the Black Rock Desert near Gerlach, Nev. (AP Photo/Reno Gazette-Journal, Andy Barron)
