‘LOLPERA’ CREATORS ON GREATER LB RADIO THURSDAY TO EXPLAIN HOW THEY MADE A SERIOUS HIT FROM A SILLY MESS
By Greater Long Beach
Ellen Warkentine and Andrew Pedroza, creators of an opera with a premise so insufferably silly that GreaterLongBeach.com critic Greggory Moore finally saw it just to be nice, will be the guests on Thursday’s edition of Greater Long Beach Radio with Dave Wielenga beginning at 6 p.m. on KBEACH.org.
Warkentine and Pedroza will answer questions about LOLPERA, which may or may not be the same as explaining it. But rest assured they’ll be asked what moved them choose the curdled cuteness of icanhascheeseburger.com as the foundation of a significant project. Free-range cat freaks flock to icanhascheeseburger.com to express and share their loving obsession by sending in strange or adorable photos of cats and competing to caption the images with misspelled and oddly pronounced words and phrases, which ostensibly come straight from the cat’s
meowth. Don’t doubt they’ll be asked how they envisioned this sweet, sad pastime as a futuristic musical parable about lives spent splashing in the shallow end of consciousness, about relentlessly trying to believe this is a meaning-of-life worth settling for.
Meanwhile, LOLPERA also became the smash hit of the Long Beach theatre scene in 2011. It sold out an extended run at the Garage Theatre, the crowning achievement of the company’s 10th anniversary.
Moore will be in the studio for Thursday night’s Greater Long Beach Radio show, too, asking Warkentine and Pedroza the smart-person questions, but also explaining what he saw and felt at that midnight performance of LOLPERA … well, it wasn’t actually a performance, per se—the opera was still being shaped and filled during workshops.
But people were paying to experience those rough drafts. Already, LOLPERA was a hit.
Now, it’s hitting the road. The last of three performances at the Hollywood Fringe Festival is Sunday afternoon at the Hudson Theatre. Later this summer, Warkentine and Pedroza and ensemble are off to New York.
Want to do a little research before Thursday’s Greater Long Beach Radio show?
Moore has written three pieces about LOLPERA for GreaterLongBeach.com—this one, and then this one, and then this one—and he isn’t the only critic to be converted by the show.
Among the best accounts was written by Sarah Bennett, a frequent GreaterLongBeach.com contributor, who was a senior at USC when this piece was published in the Daily Trojan.
LOLPERA THE HUDSON THEATRE • 6539 SANTA MONICA BLVD • HOLLYWOOD 90038 • 323.856.4249 HOLLYWOODFRINGE.ORG/PROJECTS/913 • SUN, JUNE 24 3PM • $10 (DUDE!) • THROUGH JUNE 24TH
