We’ve just launched a Kickstarter campaign to help with the next phase of development for Book Two: Robot Planet Rising. Funds will pay the performers for their time in rehearsal as we work to add the artwork to the dialogue. We’ll be performing this “rough cut” twice at the Alamo Drafthouse on S. Lamar in Austin on March 3 at 7 PM and March 4 at 2 PM.
If you pledge $10 or more, your name will be in the closing credits at the premiere on June 8!!
It’s been a while since I’ve posted, mainly because things have been so busy and I haven’t had a chance to get my thoughts in order to write about them! But read on, dear reader. It’s like a Dickensian melodrama below…
January started with a bang. Only 6 days after New Year’s we were on a plane to New York City (or, Newark, to be precise) for a three-week block of shows in New York, New England, Delaware and New Jersey. All along we had been assured by the venue in New York City that they had all of our technical needs in hand, but, as fate, or poor communication, would have it, they had none of our needs in hand! We found out about the latter two days before we had to leave, then got a bid for the gear from the very company who said they had us well in hand and, well, I guess they did have us well in hand. Or under their thumbs, at any rate. To the tune of a couple thousand dollars!
We had 25 venue representatives from around the country coming to the show in New York, so there was absolutely no way we could cancel. Our next season’s bookings depended on this show. We were literally in the palms of the technical vendor’s hands. Thank goodness we’ve lived in Austin for so long and know about the miracle that is Rock and Roll Rentals.
There’s a company in Austin that rents decent (not great) gear very, very cheap. They’ve saved my ass time and again over the years. Their manager has become a friend. They are Rock and Roll Rentals. And instead of the $600 lighting rental fee that the New York company wanted to charge us, Rock and Roll rented me equivalent lighting gear for… $16. Yes. That’s not a typo.
So in a 48 hour scramble we managed to pull together the sound console, mics, lights, and cable for about half of what the rental company in New York would have charged us. And now we were on a plane to the Big Apple.
The NYC trip went great. The shows were MUCH better attended than anyone thought they would be. We ended up with a two-week commitment for Spring 2013 from a major theatre there out of the show (details on that soon!). And NPR’s Margot Adler did an amazing piece on All Things Considered about it. Awesome.
Our next stop was Schenectady. Now, when I was a kid, Schenectady was a thriving working-class city outside of Albany. Then GE laid off most of the 45,000 workers there and the city sank into gloom. Now the city still is next to Albany, but it’s starting to come back. We were blown away by the bustling downtown. And the theatre! We played four performances in the GE Theatre at Proctors. 400 seats with a 35 by 50 foot screen. Intimate and spectacular all at the same time. We had a blast and so did the audience! The coolest part from my perspective was seeing how quickly the word of mouth got out about the show. For the final performance, a 2 PM matinee on a Sunday, they had to hold the show because they were still processing last-minute online ticket orders. Seriously. Even the box office people there were amazed by the turnout.
Oh yeah. And it snowed. Which for us Texans was magic.
After the Proctors gig, Buzz and I headed back to Austin while the rest of the cast continued to tour New England. The next show for them was at the Flynn in Burlington where about 1,200 people came out to see the show. This was due in no small part to the fact that Jason Phelps, playing Timmy on this leg of the tour, lived there for seven years and worked as a teacher. So there were a ton of families out. I got a really nice email from the marketing director there after the show that summed up the experience:
“The Intergalactic Nemesis” last night blew me away. There was something about it that I haven’t really experienced before at the Flynn – it was pure entertainment, every second of it. Yes, there was absolutely high artistry in the graphics, the music, and especially the sound effects and the actors. But I never, ever come out of a performance thinking man, those last two hours were just plain FUN. I had high expectations going in – this was definitely one of the performances in our season I was looking forward to this year. The show far exceeded my expectations. I know it’s true for the rest of the audience, too, and I can’t wait to see the next installment – we heard lots of people in the lobby wondering when it’ll be on tour.
Meanwhile in Austin, Buzz, Graham, Etta Sanders, Amy Hackerd, David Higgins, and I were becoming cast “B”. We had a showcase to perform at a conference called IPAY. I had never heard of this conference until about six months ago when one of the organizers let me know it was happening in Austin and suggested I apply for a showcase. The application process was simple so I did. But I had no idea really what I was getting into.
IPAY stands for International Performing Arts for Youth. And it turns out that a bunch of very major venues send programmers to it to check out work for family audiences. We were one of 19 projects selected to showcase and I just assumed that was everyone who applied, but it turned out that more than 150 groups applied. And we were a sensation. As I type this I’m in discussion with about 20 venues to bring the show out on tour. One of the venues, the Imaginate Festival in Edinburgh (the biggest festival in the UK for theatre for young audiences) has already booked us for May 2013. So we’re going to Scotland!! It was a whirlwind pulling it together, but it really paid off.
The next weekend, Jan. 28, the “B” team went to New Orleans and the “A” team was in New Jersey. When disaster struck both teams! At the final venue in New Jersey, the technical director, who had not returned phone calls and when he answered the phone said he didn’t have the time to talk about the rider, let Jessie Douglas know that they didn’t have a screen to project on!! Jessie worked her magic and found a screen, but when they got to the venue the guy was a bona fide jerk. Cursing at his employees, wasting time. Jessie and Agustin were stunned. As they pointed out to me after, at least it proved they could get the show up in the absolute worst case scenario. But gee whiz. Why?
Meanwhile in New Orleans, a series a major communication snafus led to an attendance of *gasp* 40 people. That’s right. More than 1,000 in Schenectady. 1,200 in Burlington. 40 in New Orleans. You can’t win ‘em all I guess.
But the biggest news came last Friday when we got confirmed as guests on CONAN! Conan O’Brien is going to play Ben. Andy Richter is playing Timmy, Danu is Molly, I’m Mysterion, Graham is playing music, and Buzz is creating the sounds in a short scene that we’ll perform on the show on February 14!
Crazytown!
To be continued….
We just started our Spring 2012 tour with a gig in New York City at the Village East Cinema. What a show. Turnout was way better than we expected, but the main purpose was to get venues excited. You see, last weekend was the major national booking conference, basically a huge shopping mall for venues around the country to choose their seasons. Anyway, about 25 venues came to see the show and there was a ton of buzz after. Already one major venue in New York has given us an offer for a two-week run! So things are hopping along.
But the highlight of the performance was the attendance of Margot Adler, the NPR reporter. She saw the show, interviewed audience, and then had me, Chris Gibson, and Buzz Moran come into the studio for an interview for a story for Weekend Edition. But when all was said and done–the story ended up airing TODAY on All Things Considered. Amazing! For me, it really was a dream-come-true. I even sent myself an email to remind myself that “today is the best it’s ever been.” It’s true!
“Sometimes it’s important to just have an escape,” Neulander says. “Life can be hard, and I feel like right now, in the times we are in, it really can’t hurt to have an opportunity for a couple of hours — for people from 7 to 70 and older — to go in the theater and escape from their daily lives and go on a pure, unadulterated adventure.”
Not mentioned in the story, but deserving a shout-out: Ray Colgan, who came up with the idea of a sci-fi radio play at Little City back in ’96; Chad Nichols, Jessica Reisman, Julia Edwards, and Lisa D’Amour, the other writers; Graham Reynolds, composer; and of course, Tim Doyle, the artist.
This weekend we play Proctors in Schenectady for four performances, then off to New England, Delaware and New Jersey.
Complete tour info HERE.
Me and Cami Alys at the Music Box in Chicago
John Bauman, who is now my manager, came in from Los Angeles to see the show that night as well. He immediately saw the potential and started to plan how we would break into the entertainment industry in LA.
Meanwhile, I was working on booking the tour that we currently are in the middle of. I think at the top of the year I had about 15 dates booked with lots of potential. I was starting to get calls from venues I hadn’t even contacted asking about the show, which was a real surprise.
Then in April I went to Los Angeles and met with Doug Edley over at GERSH who wanted to serve as the booking agent for the tour. At first I was hesitant because I felt like I was doing a good job on my own, but Doug really sold me on what he could do–bring the show to all kinds of venues that I didn’t have contact with. So I decided to go for it. And in the first couple of months of working on it, Doug increased our national tour from 22 to 28 venues.
We then played the Worthan Center in Houston and not only did about 900 people come out to see the show that night, but we also played that afternoon to 600 middle-school kids. We had a blast and it was clear that the show was going to kick butt when we started to tour in earnest in the fall.
In June we presented a work-in-progress version of the Book Two: Robot Planet Rising radio drama that Chad Nichols and I reworked from the script that Ray Colgan and I wrote back in 2001. This was instrumental in the next steps of rewriting. We took the feedback the audience gave us and used it to overhaul the material over the next six weeks. When we had a reading of the new version of the script with actors in August, they were laughing so hard at parts that they literally could not continue reading. At that point I knew the script was done and we could wrap up the comic book artwork by David Hutchison (which is looking incredible and should be done in time for STAPLE! next March).
My booth at the 2012 Midwest Arts Conference
In October we began our tour, which I’ve posted about in several recent blog posts. Coming up, we’re finalizing a gig in New Orleans, we just wrapped up plans for a New York City performance, and we’re touring New England, upstate New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and parts Midwest and Texas this spring. And then we premiere Book Two: Robot Planet Rising in June! (Tix HERE.)
Our first fall 2011 tour date!
One of the main reasons I wanted to pursue Nemesis was because I wanted to figure out a way to making a living doing what I do and stay in Austin while paying the people who work on the project a healthy living wage. Well, right now we’re doing that. So, thanks so much for your support.
Looking forward to 2012!
The final week of the Nemesis Fall 2011 Tour was a little crazy. I flew back to Austin to promote the Long Center show at Austin Comic Con, while the rest of the team took off for parts Minnesotan and Iowan on the road. I had warned everyone that it was going to be a rough week, so the team knew what to expect, but still…
On Wednesday, Nov. 9, the group arrived in Duluth MN, a pretty town right on the shores of Lake Superior. At any moment it might snow (which had me worried because they were traveling in a van with a trailer, not exactly the safest winter weather driving situation). They loaded in the show that night from 9 to midnight, did their sound check the next morning, then a performance for school kids that afternoon, and the public performance that night. Not so bad, so far, right, but then…
They drove three hours to Collegeville MN, got five hours of sleep, and then the team split up. The performers and Jessie went to an elementary school at 7:30 AM to perform act one and then lead sound effects workshops while Augie went to the venue to begin the load in process. That afternoon they sound checked at the venue, then performed that night and then…
Drove another three hours to Morris MN, loaded in the next morning, sound checked that afternoon and immediately led a sound effects workshop, then performed for the public that night. They had a great house–nearly sold out–which helped a bunch, but by this time the team was exhausted. Worse, apparently the hotel in Morris was a real rat-trap. There are only two hotels in that town and both of them are pretty awful. Oliver told me he slept in his clothes on top of the covers. Danu made the mistake of pulling the sheets off the bed. Yecch!
The presenter in Morris told me, though, that the audience already was talking about the sequel. We’ll have to figure out a better hotel situation for next time!
The team was so exhausted they decided to go straight to Storm Lake IA to get a full day off before loading the show into the theatre at Buena Vista University. That almost worked out except the presenter there had only just begun to figure out the tech requirements (even though my team had thought they had worked this stuff out). In particular, the venue was still wondering if they needed to provide a projection system (!). So Jessie and Augie met with them in person to get it sorted out. And sort it out, they did, with everyone getting along at the end (whew!). Meanwhile the performers got a sense for Storm Lake, which smells like farm country (i.e. manure) because they farm things there, but is actually quite a pretty little town. The next night they knocked it out of the park against all odds. You see, the show was just for students; part of an 11-show series the kids are required to see. So at the top of the show, these nice young adults acted like a mob of 14-year-olds, hooting, cat-calling. At intermission, the performers didn’t want to continue. But they really won the crowd over (see the comment in the Mysterion blog on this site) and at the end of the night the presenter let us know that he’d book the sequel. Awesome.
Me at Austin Comic Con
That Thursday, November 17, I flew to St. Louis to meet up with the rest of the group. When I landed, Chris, Danu, Jessie, and Kenny were all at the zoo, the FREE St. Louis Zoo. I met them there, after they had been to the monkey house and the lizard house. Awesome.
Sound Check at the Edison
The 10-Story Slide
The next day we headed to the St. Louis arch. Also awesome. I decided that I’d take Sarah and the kids back to St. Louis next summer!
Finding His Inner 12-year-old
The next day we all flew home (except Oliver who drove the van back). Then, to the Long Center for our homecoming performance.
The W serves up liquid Pang Pang
All told, the Fall 2011 tour was a huge success. Seven of the nine performing arts centers and theaters are already talking with us about bringing in the sequel. Thousands of people saw the show. And we now have a whole bunch of homes away from home.
We get December off, then we’re back on the road in January for most of the spring. Also in the spring, look for a work-in-process presentation of Book Two: Robot Planet Rising!
Happy holidays!
From a high school kid in Duluth on our Facebook page this morning: “Just saw The Intergalactic Nemesis with my lil’ sis!!! It was absolutely fantastic!!”
The past few days have been a whirlwind. Compared to the week before, which was spent mostly between gigs, the tempo has really ramped up. We played the Music Box in Chicago, drove 10 hours, played the Heights in Minneapolis, then a day off in Minneapolis, then last night it was Duluth, tonight Collegeville, tomorrow night Morris (all in Minnesota), then to Storm Lake IA, before heading to St. Louis at the Edison. That’s the last gig before we head back to Austin. More on that in a moment.
Jessie was able to score us a great deal on a hotel just outside the Chicago city limits–a W-affiliate and the price per night was the year of the person’s birth (so $69 a night for me and Buzz). The only problem was that the hotel was a 25-minute drive from the venue. So, once at the venue, we were in town all day. Not a huge deal (Chicago is a pretty great town to be stuck in), but after the gig there was the question of how people would get back to the hotel if they didn’t hop in the van (not a cheap cab ride, to say the least).
The gigs in Chicago and Minneapolis were a real crap-shoot from my perspective. Unlike the rest of the tour, which is being presented by various performing arts centers with subscribers and substantial marketing budgets, these two shows were in classic movie theaters with no marketing budgets, depending pretty much on word-of-mouth alone. The chances of anyone showing up at all were slim.
Jason's curtain speech at the Music Box in Chicago
I quickly apologized to Justin, the guy who was helping with sound. He seemed genuinely grateful that I did, so I was extra glad that I took responsibility.
Moreover, it was Cami’s first performance in public doing the Foley.
The night before, she, Buzz, and I began rehearsal at 8 PM and didn’t end until about 1:30 AM. We had fun, but it was exhausting, to say the least. By the end we could barely keep our eyes open. Would she be able to pull it off? She still needed to run some stuff in sound check.
Well, sound check happened a lot later than we hoped because of the challenges of having a minimal crew and a limited sound system. Instead of having 2 hours to run trouble spots, we had about 20 minutes.
And there was still the question of whether anyone would show up…
So we were greatly surprised when about 150 people came out to see us at the Music Box! That’s a lot of people for a 4:30 screening on a Sunday!
Cami really knocked it out of the park, too. Sure, there were a few moments when she struggled to keep up, but no one noticed except the cast. And she played it with panache! She was simply a joy to watch.
Of the 150, about 15 were friends of people in the cast, including my own Aunt Marilyn and Uncle Stephen. I had dinner with them after the show and it was great catching up. Then I met up with Chris and had a beer at the bar next to the theatre. Just as we were starting to wonder how we would get back to the hotel, Oliver texted to say he was around the corner, and, literally, as Chris’ friends headed away from the bar the van pulled up and we went back to the hotel.
The next day, we left Buzz in Chicago (he flew home that evening) and the rest of the day was spent mostly in the van on the way to Minneapolis. Jessie got us a hotel about 4 minutes away from the theatre, but four minutes north. It was a total wasteland. And the hotel itself was weird. Our room windows looked not to the outside, but to a courtyard in the middle of the hotel. Lit not by sunlight, but by fluorescents. Waking up at 8 in the morning the next day, I was like “man it’s a rainy day”, but really there was no way to tell what the weather was like.
I spent most of the day working in my hotel room (with no roommate), so I was pretty grumpy by the time I had to head to the theatre.
Setting up at The Heights
Because of the nature of the show, I was the one who actually sold tickets at the box office. Starting at about 6:15, I was inundated! It was great to meet each and every person who came to see the show. There was one couple, though, who had come to see Moneyball and were surprised to discover it wasn’t playing. They had arranged to meet friends at the theatre and I convinced them to stay for our show. When their friends showed up, however, the guy friend rolled his eyes. You could tell he really didn’t want to see this show.
But the show! The sound was great, more than 100 people came out to see it, and Cami’s performance was awesome! The audience was the most vocal we had had. They laughed at every gag, they cheered Ben’s “librarian” speech, they applauded Jean-Pierre’s final monologue, they cheered when Zygon exploded, and they leapt to their feet at the curtain call. It’s that kind of response that makes the whole tour worth it and we ate up every moment of it.
Jessie and Danu are going to make it after all
The next morning I flew back to Austin for Austin Comic Con (which is this weekend). The cast got to spend most of the day in Minneapolis proper (what a great city!). And last night they played Mitchell Auditorium in Duluth….
We play the Long Center in Austin on November 22. It’s going to be an awesome show! Tickets HERE.
In order to be able to stay in Lawrence to catch Herbie Hancock, we had to leave immediately thereafter to get to our hotel in McPherson, about a 3 hour drive. At this point, I feel like it’s worth saying something about hotels. In the past when I’ve toured, I didn’t spend that much time worrying about which hotel we would stay in as long as we could afford it. This meant that sometimes we lucked out and sometimes the hotel was a real craphole. There was one hotel in Oklahoma City, for example, that smelled like cat pee.
Yeah.
So I’d like to point out that so far the hotels have been really great. Right now I’m typing this from a W in Chicago, for example. Living the dream!
The intimate McPherson Opera House
The morning we arrived the office staff kind of avoided us, so I started wondering what was up. Jessie told me that what was up was the fact that they had sold only three tickets to the show that night. Yes. Three tickets!
To clarify: I provide the venues with artwork, copy, a marketing manual, and any creative input they’d like, but it’s up to the venue to actually promote the show. Some venues are great at that part and some venues, well…
We had talked about making this a family Halloween blowout, so I figured we’d have a crowd of at least 200 at the show. Needless to say, I was a little taken aback by the advance sales.
But then, a Halloween miracle happened. About 250 people came to the door that night to buy tickets. And we were told afterwards by the venue managers that the audience was the most effusive at the curtain call that they had ever seen in the two years of operating the venue. They literally would not let the performers leave the stage. After, we spent about two hours meeting the folks who came out. One person even said that she might make the trek to Austin on June 8 for the premiere of Book Two: Robot Planet Rising because that was her birthday!
From McPherson, we then had our biggest stretch of driving ahead of us. Two full days in the van, stopping overnight in Des Moines and then onto Madison WI. Not much to tell there except that everyone got along great–which I can tell you is pretty awesome in and of itself. This team of people has incredible chemistry. Maybe that’s why we’re having so much fun on the road!
The beautiful Capitol Theatre at the Overture Center in Madison WI
In Madison, a few key things happened that would change the nature of the tour forever.
Well, that’s a little dramatic, but there were a few cool things that happened in Madison. First, Cami Alys joined the tour. Cami is Buzz’s replacement starting tonight in Chicago, actually. She and Buzz will split doing Foley for the duration of the tour this season. The other thing was that Shana Merlin rejoined the cast for the one performance at the Overture Center in Madison. Shana originated the role of Molly last year at the premiere of the Live-Action Graphic Novel version of the show at the Long Center in Austin. Shana’s husband is from Madison, so it seemed like the perfect tie-in.
Chris Gibson and his new best friend at Ella's Diner
The coolest part of the school assembly for me was the kids’ reaction. They applauded at the end of every scene–a real sign that they were enjoying it. One staff member told me that she was planning to watch about the first 10 minutes of the show but then got sucked up into the story telling and before she knew it, 50 minutes had flown by. I love it!
That afternoon I had a great chat with Susan Crofton, the staff member who booked us into the Overture Center. They are thinking about bringing the show back, maybe in rep with the sequel, which would be a dream for me. But then the craziest thing happened. She asked me if I knew a friend of hers from Austin: Katey Gilligan. I couldn’t believe my ears. Katey’s daughter Talia is my daughter Piper’s best friend. But even more crazily, Katey’s ex-husband is named Ben Willcott (yes, there’s a real Ben) and his face was even the model for the character in the Nemesis comic-book series. Perhaps Madison was destiny…
Now is probably a good time to mention that Buzz is originally from Madison and, better, Nov. 4, the day of the show, was his mom’s 74th birthday!
Jason and Buzz sing "Happy Birthday" to Vi Moran
After the show, one 11-year-old boy told me that Nemesis was the “best movie I’ve ever seen.” Awesome.
The next morning we drove to Chicago (that was yesterday) and tonight we’ve got a performance at the Music Box.
Next Tuesday, it’s the Heights in Minneapolis. Then, three other Minnesota venues, down into Iowa, then to St. Louis. Finally, we head back to Austin on Nov. 22 to perform again at the Long Center. Please let your friends know about the tour and especially the Long Center show. I’d really love to sell that out as a homecoming for our incredible first month on the road!
For me, there’s always the question of whether an audience who is completely unfamiliar with Nemesis will actually like it once they see it. I mean, sure, in Austin we had a giant build-up to the premiere. People knew this was a home-town show. Many people in the audience were our friends or friends of friends. So, of course they’d be forgiving and probably be rooting for our success. But now that we’ve left home, there really aren’t those kinds of connections (unless you count Buzz’s brother Jeff asking the first question in the post-show Q&A at the Lied Center: “Hey, what did your parents think of you making all that noise when you were a kid?” Heh. Heh.). And when you’re face to face people never tell you that they didn’t like what they saw because they understand that that would hurt your feelings. So unless you get a review, you never can be quite sure what people really thought. (Though the entire audience stood pretty quickly at the curtain call in Lawrence and the folks at the McPherson Opera House told us that in the two years they’ve been presenting work in their newly renovated space, this was the most enthusiastic response they’d seen to a show.)
Anyway, I feel like I can rest easy now. Sure, it’s only one person’s opinion. But they put that opinion out into the world. From KCMetropolis.org:
The show was so polished that it almost seemed as though a) live-action graphic novels were actually a standard style of performance, and b) Neulander and company had perfected it.
Woot!
Read the entire review HERE.
Raining in Wellington
l to r: Oliver Freeman, Jessie Douglas, Buzz Moran, Chris Gibson (in hat), Agustin Frederic, Danu Uribe, Kenny Redding, David Higgins
l to r: Mysterion, Jessie, Kenny at the Lied Center of Kansas
Ann and Erika strike the set at the Lied
Tonight, Halloween, we play McPherson KS. They say they’re no “fear” in “McPherson”. We’ll have to see about that….
The Angels at Bass Hall
We had a fantastic show in Fort Worth last night. First of all, the venue is outstanding. Somehow they made a 2,000-seat venue feel intimate. The acoustics were incredible. And the Monday night crowd was AWESOME! When Jeremy Byrd, the programmer there, invited us to play the hall about a year ago, I was so honored. My wife and I visited Fort Worth back in 1998 right after Bass Hall was completed and I told her how amazing it would be to actually do a show there. Now, all these years later, I actually did it. Holy mackerel! Awesome! Here’s what one person emailed me last night:
I took my two grandsons (8 and 6) to see your show at the Bass tonight, and I must say it was a grand slam! I expected it to be good, and it was much better than I expected. The boys were mesmerized by it – I think for a good 1/3 of the show they never noticed the actors because they were so glued to the artwork. When the six year old realized there were “real people” doing the voices, he became all the more impressed. Of course, you ended up costing me an extra $100 what with t-shirts and comic books and such – but it was all well worth it.
I just wanted to say thanks for a great show. I can’t wait for part two to come out. I wish you well in your endeavors.
Everyone on the trip is in great spirits and we just can’t wait to get to the next venue: the Ritz in rural Wellington, Texas, on the way to Lawrence, Kansas.
