Hang On To Your Lego

Featuring actors & props rendered in LEGO®, this short animated music video film, A Grand and Merry Race, won first prize at the Brickfest Animation Festival. The soundtrack contains passages from Raymond Scott's classic "Powerhouse." Watch it: here

Return of the Puppets

Sinking Ship Productions, who staged this show in 2009 in New York City, reports:

We were one of 3 winners in the Vertical Response 'New Deal' competition. That means we won $2,500 BECAUSE OF YOUR VOTES! What will we do with the money? We're putting it toward a new production of Powerhouse, which we first presented at last year's New York International Fringe Festival. We're currently in rehearsals, continuing development, preparing for a full run of the show. No dates have been set yet, but we'll keep you posted.

POWERHOUSE (with puppets), Act II

The New York Fringe Festival production Powerhouse, a freewheeling take on Raymond Scott's life and music, gets an extended life. Four additional performances will be staged Sept 19-21 as part of Fringe Encore, which features the best 19 (out of 200+) shows from the August festival. Ticket and venue details about the show are here. We blogged about the show on August 17, with rave reviews linked at the bottom. Here's another.

I hadn't seen the show at the time, and later attended one of the final performances of the limited run. The bravos are deserved. Powerhouse the musical, like its novelty namesake, doesn't have a dull moment. It's cleverly constructed and staged at a dizzying pace. For a production featuring real people (and two hand puppets), it might as well be animated. You'll learn a bit about Scott, and be hugely entertained in the process. If you consider yourself even a modest Scott authority, ignore the factual inaccuracies in the chronicle. I told writer Josh Luxenberg and director Jon Levin after the show that it was riddled with historical errors—and that I wouldn't change a word in the script. It's a Raymond Scott fantasia. The cast (six, each playing multiple roles) is charismatic, with physical gestures and facial expressions that match the pacing. At the Festival's closing ceremony, they received an award for "Outstanding Ensemble."


Raymond Scott's widow, Mitzi, is 91 and lives in Southern California. She will be flying to New York next weekend to attend the Sunday matinee, where she will behold herself portrayed onstage by the vivacious Clare McNulty. Twenty years ago, such an event would have seemed unlikely, if not unthinkable.

POWERHOUSE — with puppets

We'll just quote part of the press release for this intriguing production currently running at the New York Fringe Festival (ecstatic reviews posted at bottom):

With puppetry and live action, swing dancing and physical comedy, POWERHOUSE tells the story of a brilliant man who wrote music that nearly every American has heard and yet almost no one can identify. It’s 1936 and 27 year-old Harry Warnow has it all — a beautiful wife, a hit record, a recording company, a publishing company, his very own swing orchestra and a new name: Raymond Scott. But in 30 years he would be virtually unknown. Secluded in his home studio, he would spend his time writing commercials and inventing futuristic music machines. Unbeknownst to Scott, however, his music had become imprinted on the minds of millions. For years, the animators at Warner Bros. had been scoring their Looney Tunes cartoons with Scott’s life’s work. This would be his legacy — and he never knew. Featuring puppets playing cartoons, people playing machines, and machines playing music, the acclaimed Sinking Ship Productions presents the world premiere of POWERHOUSE at the 2009 New York International Fringe Festival.

You can download a pdf of the show's press release here. The production opened Saturday. Scott's son Stan Warnow was impressed, emailing: "It was well done and inventive. Staging and directing were very good. It was fluid and moved right along, lots happening on stage." Although we haven't yet seen the production, we met with Jon Levin and Josh Luxenberg a few months ago while they were researching the project. Their absorption with the details of Scott's legacy conveyed impressive intentions to tell the story respectfully, if idiosyncratically. And they were nice guys, so we're cheering them on.

Update 1: reviewed by The New York Times Arts Beat:

Powerhouse, which somehow manages to pack very funny puppetry, exuberant dance numbers, fascinating historical tangents, a mountain of narrative and a vivid sense of period mood into one steam train of a drama, is the rare Fringe show that lives up to its title.

Update 2: Another satisfied customer: "Every element was perfect and brilliantly creative. It's what live theater can be that no other medium can match." Update 3: TimeOut New York: "... a kinetic and visually enchanting production. Aiming to honor the mad, creative urge to perfectly transmute ideas into art, Powerhouse succeeds beautifully." Update 4: Doesn't anyone not like this show? Update 5: Andrew loved it (and so did Andrew): "Powerhouse is that rare Fringe Fest gem that doesn’t come across like a drag show on steroids." Update 6: Jeff Winner attended the August 22 performance and met some of the cast, including Erik Lochtefeld, who plays the lead. Jeff reports:

Finally, after all these years, I met Raymond Scott! I had read he was only about 5'9", but apparently that was just part of the Scott mythology. He's actually 6'5". Photographic evidence:

Photo: Das Überbabe

The Return of Taki76

A few weeks ago, I reported that Ropeadope recording artist Taki76 had made a toy of himself to 'jam' with his Raymond Scott figure. With these dolls and others, Taki has now created an RS tribute video featuring his homemade stop-motion animation. The soundtrack is Taki's new cover of Scott's "Powerhouse," with rhymin' courtesy of Jenny Jen The Skate Woman. (Don't blink or you'll miss cameos by Andre 3000, Mr. T, Doom's mask, Pac-Man, and others.)

Select a video format:

• YouTube • Vimeo • MySpace Video

Download a free MP3 of Taki76's "Powerhouse" cover and other goodies here.

UPDATE from Taki: "I made a black & white version just for fun. I used an original Scott recording of 'Powerhouse': here."

Taki76

Funk/soul/electro artist Taki76 reports:

"I love the Raymond Scott toy figure so much, it inspired me to make one of myself!"

casting call: swing dancing puppets

The interesting things one discovers in the Realm of Net via Google Alerts. From today's web-trawl:

Powerhouse - male actors needed Casting no. 104560 - New York, USA

A collaborative piece about the brilliant but forgotten composer, Raymond Scott

Sinking Ship Productions is looking for male actors for our upcoming production, POWERHOUSE. The play will be built collaboratively through research and rehearsal over the course of three to four months. We are particularly interested in actors with Viewpoints, puppetry and/or collaboration experience.

POWERHOUSE will explore the complex artistic life of composer and musical engineer Raymond Scott. The performers will work together with writers and the director to create the play through improvisation, using Viewpoints and found text. We will draw inspiration from his writing, compositions, interviews and other sources, and use a combination of live acting, puppetry and music to tell the story.

Actor/puppeteers in the ensemble will play multiple roles. Swing dancing or puppetry experience a plus but not required for all roles except Raymond Scott. All roles are age-flexible.

More at the link above. Crazy idea. May it succeed.

Perhaps they can get this guy to star as the male lead. All they have to do is ask!