Billups Design

As a recent University of Michigan alumnus, I’ve actually always considered Ann Arbor a kind of Hogwarts away from home – especially come winter when white snow and shimmering icicles dangle off English Gothic buildings in combination with bountiful pitchers of butterbeer – or Long Island Iced Tea – turn the campus into a magical winter wonderland. And although by spring the snow is melted, a clever and ambitious bunch of U of M students/alumni brought that Hogwarts feeling back to campus last April with their original production of A Very Potter Musical which was produced for one fleeting weekend at the University of Michigan’s student-run theater organization, Basement Arts. Thank goodness for a rolling camera and modern technology, you can watch AVPM on YouTube as thousands of other HP fanatics have been doing, whilst singing along!

I’d describe the show as jolly, as in, it makes you feel unusually happy while you’re watching it, after you leave, and even when you’re singing the songs in the shower later. Intertwined with this is farce, slapstick, some silly and a lot of smart. While AVPM pokes fun at the HP series, it is ultimately a totally awesome orchestrated ode to J.K. Rowling’s seven tomes.

The live performance itself of AVPM was a huge success; the lines were equivalent to a couple New York City blocks, the theater was packed to a fire marshal’s dismay, and they even had to add an additional performance. But an unexpected success followed suit. When the writers of the show uploaded the filmed version to YouTube, it became an overnight sensation. HP fanatics flocked to their channel like wizards to brooms. Thus took form Team StarKid. Or, thus took on more shape, Team Starkid. The point is, a bunch of really good friends who were feeling creative put on a show and now have fans across the world drawing adorable caricatures of them and designating shrines in their honor.

Who’d have thought that a live play would be such an internet hit? Since BillupsDesign is always interested in how the internet affects our lives, I thought it a great occasion to ask collaborating writer of AVPM and Team StarKid’s newest hit, Me and My Dick, and overall great guy, Brian Holden, about his experience with art and the internet.

Here’s what he had to say:

Q. Where did the idea come from to upload the performance to YouTube? Why was it filmed in the first place?

A. A Very Potter Musical was actually what we thought was going to be the last in a “series” of plays that we did in college. Sophomore year, Nick Lang adapted and essentially rewrote a version of The Hobbit, which was a huge hit. He worked on that project almost by himself, though. The next play in the series was what we called The Hobbit 2: The Lord of the Rings! This play was an even bigger success than Hobbit, and was written by Nick, Matt Lang, and myself. Although we video taped H2:LOTR, the quality is poor. We only use one camera and the mic was at the back of the house so it’s hard to hear a lot of the show. Long story short, we basically recorded AVPM because we wanted to have a good quality recording of the show for our own memories, but also so that we could show our friends and family a copy that had decent audio and was the tiniest bit cinematic. We uploaded it to YouTube for the same reason. Pretty strictly just to show friends and family.

Q: The response to AVPM was ginormous and immediate. You had an instant fan base. The weird and wonderful part is your proximity to these fans since you’re distributing the movies yourself. Is there a kind of relationship between fans and the artist that YouTube offers that live performances or larger distributed media might not?

A: Absolutely! This generation is so insane. Our lives have literally been changed by things as seemingly stupid as Facebook and YouTube. But seriously, our lives are completely different because of them! The way we talk to each other is different, there’s new social/digital etiquette and language. We often sit around the living room, reading comments on the videos, and just marvel at how powerful and mind-blowing the internet is.

But to answer your question, yes, our relationship with our fans is a lot different than it would be if we were on TV. For some reason, the internet has a sort of casual attitude that makes our fans feel comfortable contacting us, which we are totally thankful for. We’re friends with a lot of fans on facebook, people follow us on twitter, and as I said earlier, we really enjoy reading what they write. We also get a ton of fan-art made for us, which is great to look at. A lot of it is just really cute or funny, but some of the art is amazing! It blows us away. I think it’s all a part of that casual ‘tude. Internet “stars” are less threatening in a way (because they’re not really STARS! they’re just people on the web!) so there is less risk in sending them stuff and communicating with them.

Q: On the other hand, most of you are/were theater performance majors. You obviously have a passion for being on a stage in front of people. What did the live audience members of AVPM experience that can’t be recreated through the internet?

A: Yeah, after being an acting major for four years I was used to how exhilarating it was to be on stage, but what I had forgot about is that it’s also really cool to be in a live audience! Although I co-wrote AVPM with the Lang Brothers, I didn’t act in it and I wasn’t there for the rehearsals. I hadn’t even heard the music before the first night, so I was truly an audience member as well. It was absolutely incredible. All the actors were amazing, the music was great, and the audience was really feeling it. There’s nothing that can replace seeing a live show because you literally sense it in a different way. Your human ears and eyes are so much better than the camera’s. You can see everything that’s happening on stage: the set changes, the band, the people in the row in front of you. Nothing compares to the energy that is there when a group of people is experiencing something in the moment together. Especially when they really like the show!

Q: You just put on a new original musical, Me & My Dick with the intentions of uploading it for your YouTube fans. How was preparing for this show different from AVMP? Is anything specifically done with the live show to make it more “filmable” or accessible for people on their computers?

A: Well, since we knew we were going to have a premiere online, we tried to be a little more careful about what we posted on Facebook and Twitter about the show. But as far as the live show goes, we didn’t modify the blocking or anything like that to make it more presentable on the really small screen. We did, however, just try and get a lot more coverage. We had four camera’s this time (instead of three, like on AVPM) and two mics and we also recorded two nights. We were very aware that this needed to be as polished a finish product as we could make it.

Q: You’re right out of college, some of you still in school, what has the experience been like so far being creative with your best buddies and enjoying the success you’ve had so far? What advice would you give to your peers and future artists of the world? What’s the most surprising thing you’ve learned from this experience so far?

A: Well, I can speak for myself and a few others I think when I say that being out of college can be very jarring. Like so many other times through childhood and high school, you move from a smaller, tight circle, into a huge-ass, sloppy who-knows-what-shape world. It’s easy to lose a sense of purpose during that time. Especially if you’re an artist. So I guess what I enjoy most about our success thus far is that it’s given me a sense of purpose. When I work with my best friends on a project, it’s something that not only we enjoy, but others love as well. In a way, it’s sort of our responsibility not to ignore that. When Life hands you something as good as that, DON’T TURN YOUR BACK! As a group, Team StarKid is so extremely fortunate to be comprised of really talented kids who just love to be together and entertain people. But even when no one on the internet had seen AVPM, we were still talking about more projects we could do, just so we could stay together. So I guess my advice to future artists would be to collaborate (it’s the most rewarding thing I’ve ever experienced, and continues to be over and over again), never underestimate how successful stupid ideas can be (a harry potter musical for example), and never forget the internet has the potential for tangible rewards (like donation money to fund a play about a singing penis)!

A Very Potter Musical was written by Matt Lang, Nick Lang and Brian Holden. Music by Darren Criss and AJ Holmes. Directed by Matt Lang.

You can watch A Very Potter Musical at here

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