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Picture it. I am six years old walking through lower Manhattan with my father. I am surrounded by the irate screams of stoned cab drivers, sober junkies and hot-blooded transvestite manicurists. There are hippies, halter top clad women protesting porn and punks -- back in the day when punk was actually rebellious. It was grimy, decadent, brimming with life. I look up at my father and with all of the self assuredness a worldly six year old could muster think, “You can go home now, I’ll be fine. You don’t belong here. Leave me, I’ll be fine but you get out of here before you get hurt” I never felt safe until I hit the city streets. Now, nearly 900 years later, I still fall in love with this town a bit more each day. No, I do not like being told where, when or if I can smoke a cigarette (even though I quit some time ago), I still want to scream every time someone decides to teach a wobbling two year old toddler how to walk down stairs at the subway entrance during rush hour and I have been known to spend a day and a half trying to get across town in a cab. I also saw Guernica up close at MOMA, made eye-contact with Gorbachov at the corner of fifth and 57th and have played (and won!) several drinking games with major rock stars from Scrap Bar to Squeeze Box to Au Bar. My point is that as draining as this city can be, everyday is an opportunity to find something to justify it. At times, yes, it is like trying to find hay in a needle stack - but that is part of the fun of it. Case in point, and well worth the trek across the theme park that has become Times Square to the John Houseman Theatre, is the astoundingly entertaining Toxic Audio in Loudmouth. Part performance art / variety / comedy, part musical theatre, part concert this ensemble dazzles it’s audience with searing electric guitars, primal baselines and gut wrenching drum beats spanning classical, pop, rock and jazz. Oh, did I mention there are no musical instruments? Not one. No Steinway, Zidjian, Yamaha or Fender. Not even a triangle, not so much as a tissue paper and comb. All of this symphonic majesty is created using nothing but the human voice.
After seeing the show three or four times (I have since seen it twice more!), I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to sit down with the entire cast as well as the technical director to discuss the past, present and future of this high-octane, thoroughly original production. With less than an hour before curtain, I sat down with: Jeremy James (Performer, Co-Writer) a hunky JFK Jr. look-a-like. He has a raspy belt that practically defines 80’s power ballads - look out Bon Jovi. Shalisa James (Performer, Co-Music Director, Arranger) maybe it is the Ginger Grant red hair, or the velvety, lush vocals -her cover of Evanescence's 'Bring Me To Life' is breath-taking - or maybe just the black corset that is part of her David Brooks designed costume, she commands the stage with a sweet vampishness. Michelle Mailhot-Valines (Performer, Co-Music Director, Arranger) She possesses a cherubic beauty that belies a power-house voice. Surprisingly, she is off-stage, the quietest of the ensemble. Rene Ruiz (Performer, Co-Writer, Conceiver, Director) The definite ringmaster. He has a gift for stone faced humor. On stage he is reminicent of a baritone Tim Conway. Paul Sperrazza (Performer, Co-Writer) is a scene stealing persona that could only be concieved by Jim Henson. If Bert and Ernie had a break-dancing, pop star, martial artist best pal, it would be Sperrazza. John A. Valines III (Technical Director, Sound) The Great Oz behind the velvet curtain! NYC.COM: WHAT IS
THE INSPIRATION? WHERE DOES SOMETHING Rene: It kind of comes from two separate sources. One is my background and interest in theatre and in really liking shows that don’t follow the norm and are kind of unique and explore new ideas and new types of entertainment. So I was seeing a lot of shows like Blue Man Group and Stomp and Cirque du Soleil and watching what they were doing with these art forms that have been around for a really long time. And finding a way to make them fresh and unique and visual and all of those things. That was one side of it. The other side was I was working in Orlando, Florida at a lot of the theme parks there and working primarily in A Capella music. Which is where I met everybody here. NYC.COM: YOU ALL CAME TOGETHER WORKING IN THEME PARKS? Rene: Yes, right. And we were all doing different forms of A Cappella. like Doo-Wop and patriotic and vocal jazz things and I thought, well here is something that no one has ever presented to a theatre audience in a theatrical way and it was an opportunity to put something together that, again would be fresh and unique and contemporary to a lot of new listeners. There is an outlet in Orlando, Florida called the Orlando Fringe Festival -- there are several around the country and around the world -- and they afford a great opportunity for performers in the area to experiment with new types of entertainment with new shows, with new ideas. The whole show was basically put together for an appearance at the Fringe Festival and was so successful and just took off that we decided to stay together as a team. The dream became “Hey - we might be able to take this somewhere and eventually be able to get to a New York audience and present our work there.” NYC.COM: I LOVE THIS SHOW! I OFTEN HAVE DIFFICULTY EXPLAINING IT TO PEOPLE BECAUSE IT DOES NOT FIT INTO ANY TRADITIONAL CATEGORY. HOW DO ANY OF YOU DESCRIBE IT? Jeremy: We use words like “tight harmonies,” “improv,” “comedy,” “fun.” I say instead of going to the theatre it’s like going to a party. There is a lot of audience participation involved and it’s real. What we do that is maybe a little bit different than some shows is we like that interaction. We want people from the very intro (referring here to a series of questions, instructions and sing-alongs projected to a screen on stage to encourage audience participation) - we’re getting people barking back at the screen and inter-acting - it’s an interactive party and we need that audience participation. Shalisa: Sometimes we have an audience member on stage and they (the audience) start heckling for us to do something or for the audience member to do something and we actually enjoy that! There are moments in the show that are very open and playful and what I find interesting about it is that we take you on such a journey that for a 5 year old kid there is something that will appeal and for an 80 year old there is something that will appeal. So while the entire body of work may not exactly be someone’s cup of tea, there is something in it for everybody. NYC.COM: WAS THAT PART OF THE GOAL IN PUTTING THIS TOGETHER, TO APPEAL TO 5 YEAR OLDS AND 95 YEAR OLDS? Rene: I don’t know if I had an age range in mind, I knew that I wanted it to have mass appeal. I wanted it to be compartmentalized so that there would be sections in it, so that you could take out a section that wasn’t strong and put in a section that was and move things around. That way you have an evening of very strong individual numbers that come together to build a show but those individual numbers would be completely different from each other, from one moment to the next. Shalisa: And all of our backgrounds are so different. We each appreciate different styles of music so much that the show is a wide variety and a real mix of different styles of music NYC.COM: I DO WANT TO TOUCH ON THAT. IT DOES RANGE FROM JAZZ TO RAP TO ROCK. WHAT ARE YOUR EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUNDS? DID YOU ALL STUDY IN THE SAME WAY? Paul: We come from all different backgrounds Shalisa: Michele is a vocal jazz person - scat singing, lots of Ella Fitzgerald, Mel Torme. Rene has a theatre background - largely musical theatre. Paul is a great mimic! We were introduced to him when he was a pup singing Doo-Wop. I was one of those session singer kids and studied music in college but was primarily a pop and gospel type of singer. Jeremy: Paul actually got a music scholarship. My grandmother wouldn’t pay for college unless I got a business degree! But every chance I got I was in choir and music classes and doing a play or a show. Rene: It’s not just the level of education, but that we came at it from a lot of different angles. Music, performance, theory. There are a lot of different ways we were approaching our music backgrounds Shalisa: Rene has a background in directing theatre, even prior to this show. He directed all of us, except Michele, in different productions that were book productions. I had a theatre background, Michelle has a theatre background, so that helps us a lot in our arranging skills.
NYC.COM: PAUL, I WANT TO ASK YOU WHERE THE PHYSICAL COMEDY COMES FROM. YOU MOVE IN A WAY THAT MOST PEOPLE SIMPLY DO NOT HAVE THE ABILITY TO. Paul: I was a martial arts teacher. That’s where some of the physical aspects, like the back flip comes from. I was in gymnastics. Basically what I brought to the table, other than doing a back flip to close the show, was I was in a break dancing troupe and was used as a human jump rope. But singing was always my first love. I can bring all of the things I love - martial arts, break dancing, and singing - and put them to use. Jeremy: I think the cool thing about this show is developing material over six years! Getting to know each other and getting to know our own strengths, we fell into these niches in the group so we built the show around our strengths. The first year we were together Michelle didn’t scat at all. Then one day we were playing around and suddenly out this came and whoah! There it was and we had to put it in. The same with Paul. Like the coughing sneezing thing. (Here we are talking about a show stopping number that will bring out the 12-year-old boy in even the most sophisticated of theatre goers. In short, a base line created with sneezes, coughs, hiccups and any other phlegm induced noise they can think of. Masterpiece Theatre it is not, but when combined with Paul’s Chaplin-esque gift for physical comedy, it is theatrical gold!) NYC.COM: I WANT TO ASK ABOUT THAT! Rene: Some people are shocked at where we are willing to go for our humor. We know you can’t please everybody but we know what the kids walk away with and we know that we have to reach them too! NYC.COM: SO DID IT COME ABOUT BECAUSE SOMEONE CAME TO REHEARSAL WITH A COLD? Jeremy: That was one of the first bits we came up with. Shalisa: We are an ever-evolving work in progress.. Rene: The very first Fringe show, there was a segment we called “The Doctor Is In.” It was basically creating a vocal rhythm with those coughing and sneezing and hiccupping noises. Jeremy: It was originally from the movie Ferris Beuler’s Day Off. Shalisa: We did it for the first Fringe Festival then we raised the bar and said “Can we cough on somebody and then he gets all the symptoms.” Then we played around to see what Paul could do with that and then we added a song. It is a work in progress! NYC.COM: IT LOOKS EXHAUSTING! Paul: Oh, it is! Jeremy: One time we had to do it for a New York television station from three different camera angles and we had to perform it three times in a row. I think Paul was ready to throw up! Paul: The thing that sells that number is the physical comedy, the physical aspect. I can just sit there and vocally create the rhythm (he demonstrates ala Michael Jackson) but... Jeremy: You gotta fall all over the stage! Shalisa: And you have to be savvy enough to get out of his way. NYC.COM: I NEVER THOUGHT OF THAT! Paul: I almost take Shalisa out! NYC.COM: I WANT TAKE SOME TIME TO DISCUSS THE TECHNICAL ASPECT. (to John Valines) I CONSIDER YOU TO BE THE SIXTH PERFORMER HERE. Entire cast: So do we!!! NYC.COM: DOES IT FEEL THAT WAY TO YOU? DO YOU FEEL LIKE IT’S A PERFORMANCE FOR YOU EVEY NIGHT EVEN THOUGH YOU ARE BEHIND THE SCENES? John: In the sense that some of the bits were just ideas that we had to bring to life. A lot of the spotlight gags were a result of me just playing with them (the cast). They were so into it and so receptive and they said, “Yeah, keep playing with it like that.” Paul: John is also a gifted director and is a great improv comedian. So to have him up there as the sixth performer, on the fly, always doing improv comedy with lighting and sound cues, is like having an extra arm. Jeremy: As we discovered bits and punch lines he grew with us and discovered those things from a technical aspect. Rene: For us to say we do this show with out musical instruments, that we just use our voices, the reality of it is that we are using our microphones in various ways to capture different sounds that our voices are doing. We kind of use them as an instrument. Then John is up there on a board using it as an instrument because he is fading the sounds, he is panning them around the room, he’s being musical in the way he interprets the technology. The origin is vocal, but it is all being manipulated through technology. John: Just like an actor looks for motivation, I look for motivation for sound. If Rene says he wants a particular sound, I ask him what the motivation is for it. We work on it together and ask if it makes sense. We really explore the origin and reason for the sound. Rene: We want to be sure there are a variety of sonic effects throughout the show and make sure we are not repeating the same effect. Each piece should have a particular sound and feel to it, both from a sound standpoint and from a lighting standpoint. NYC.COM: WHO ARE THE ARTISTS YOU LIKE LISTING TO? Paul: Michael Jackson! (This is no surprise. He moves just as well - if not better - than the legendary Jackson) Shalisa: People who play with their voices a lot like Bobby McFerrin, Take Six, and Manhattan Transfer. We put our own spin on things but they have been an influence. We have been called Take Six on Crack and Manhattan Transfer on Drugs.
NYC.COM: I WANT TO ASK ABOUT THE AUDIENCE INTERACTION. THE AUDIENCE MEMBERS SEEM TO REALLY ENJOY IT. WHAT DO YOU LOOK FOR WHEN YOU PICK SOMEONE TO BRING ON STAGE? HOW DO YOU KNOW THEY WILL PLAY ALONG? Jeremy: The show is constructed so that each volunteer has maybe has just a little more to do than the last. That’s why we start with group responses from the whole audience, it loosens people up. Paul has the first volunteer, (In a sweet, romantic date vignette) who can basically just sit there and look nice and be a cute girl and not much is really required...except to put up with Paul. Paul: I want them to be as uncomfortable as possible!! Jeremy: For all of us there has to be a little discomfort. You don’t really want an actor up there, you really want a normal person who is maybe a little timid but ready to have some fun and kind of learns with you as the bit progresses. We never sit there - we never speak in the show - so we can’t sit there and tell them “OK, now you should do this.” So it’s fun to throw these challenges at people and watch as they learn. So they realize what we want them to do and then, if it really works, they start to add their own spin. We actually hope the whole audience does that to some degree throughout the show. Rene: That is a very big part of the show. We say in the show “Never underestimate the power of the human voice.” It’s not just the idea of how we communicate with other people with our voices, but how we communicate without our voices. NYC.COM: YOU REALLY DO CONNECT TO THE
AUDIENCE. THEY Paul: When the audience is feeding it back to us, we put on a 150% show, it’s awesome. Shalisa: It’s really fun when we are backstage listening to the opening segment. It’s more fun for us when we hear the audience going nuts...we don’t want to hear anyone shhushhhing! NYC.COM: DOES THAT HAPPEN? Shalisa: The show is so non-traditional, sometimes it takes a few minutes for certain people to catch on. Rene: It is not everyone’s cup of tea but it is not an extreme either, like De LaGuardia. It is important to remember that we are not doing anything to demean people or make fun of them. We are not doing it in a simple way, we do it in a really smart way. We want the audience to think. NYC.COM: YOU HAVE BEEN ALL OVER WITH THE SHOW. MEXICO, CANADA, THE CARRIBBEAN. HAVE YOU FOUND THAT THE NEW YORK AUDIENCE IS SIGNIFICANTLY DIFFERENT THAN OTHER AUDIENCES? Shalisa: We expected that it would be and it really has been surprisingly very, very receptive and pretty wonderful to us. NYC.COM: DID YOU THINK NEW YORK WOULD BE LESS RECEPTIVE? Shalisa: We thought it would be a tougher audience to win over and it’s just been amazing! Rene: We knew it would be a smart audience so I think there were a couple of instances where we said “You know what, let’s play up to them - the intelligence that we are going to be greeted with here.” It’s not that other audiences aren’t intelligent, it’s just that New Yorkers have seen soooo much! They are... Jeremy: Savvy and not easily impressed. NYC.COM: WHERE DO YOU SEE THIS ULTIMATLY GOING? Rene: The idea and the original intention was to be able to put something together that would become a franchise like Stomp or Blue Man. I think it’s not effective to look at that happening in the long run. I think right now we are especially looking at putting our intentions into making this as successful as we can, making this run as strong as we can. Where it takes us from there? It’s just a question of what we want to tackle next because we have got to find the audience. Right now we have a situation of audiences really loving it, but we are not selling out every night. We are trying to figure out how to reach more audience and create more business than we know what to do with, so that we have a reason to create alternative outlets. Jeremy: Our goal is to make Toxic Audio as recognizable as Blue Man. So when people hear the name, many of them will automatically just get it. We would love to “brand” Toxic Audio. NYC.COM: WHAT WOULD IT BE LIKE TO CAST THIS SHOW WITH OTHER COMPANIES? ARE THERE MANY PEOPLE OUT THERE WHO CAN DO WHAT YOU DO? Shalisa: As far as what we have done creatively, probably not, because it has been six years behind putting it together. But, performing it, the way that we have set it now, we do believe that there are people out there who can do that. NYC.COM: SO THIS IS SOMETHING THAT CAN BE LEARNED? Rene: The very first year of Toxic Audio, Paul was not doing any vocal percussions at all and literally picked it up in a couple of months and honed it and has worked on it a long time to get it to the point where it is today - but it can be learned from scratch... Paul: IT AIN’T EASY!!!!!! Shalisa: With the right people and the right skills, it certainly can be learned. We hope that we have put in the creative legwork and now the learning curve will be easier for any new cast. Rene: The other option is doing what we have done with our group. That is finding people with unique talents and building pieces around them. With the audience now lining up in the lobby, I reluctantly let this talented group of artists go. Spread the word! Toxic Audio in Loudmouth are voices that must be heard to be believed! Toxic Audio in Loudmouth
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© 2007 Mikal Saint George |
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