Starship (Rewatch #4, 9/30/2020)
YouTube publish date: April 30, 2011
Number of views on date of rewatch: 4,171, 828
Original Performance Run: February 11-23, 2011 at the Hoover-Leppen Theatre in Chicago
Ticket price: $25
Director: Matt Lang
Music and Lyrics: Darren Criss
Book: Brian Holden, Matt Lang, Nick Lang, and Joe Walker
Cast album price and availability: $8.91 on Amazon and iTunes
Release date: April 29, 2011
Parody or original: original content, inspired by Starship Troopers, The Little Mermaid, and Alien
Main cast and characters:
Bug - Joey Richter
February - Denise Donovan
Commander Up - Joe Walker
Taz/Buggette - Lauren Lopez
Tootsie Noodles/Pincer - Dylan Saunders
Mega-Girl - Meredith Stepien
Junior - Brian Holden
Roach - Brant Cox
Specs - Julia Albain
Krayonder - Joe Moses
Musical numbers
Act I
“I Wanna Be” Characters: Bug, Roach, and Ensemble (playing inhabitants of the Bug World)
“Get Back Up” Characters: Taz, Up, and Starship Rangers
“Life” Characters: Bug
“Hideous Creatures” Characters: Starship Rangers and Bugs
“Kick It Up A Notch” Characters: Pincer, The Mosquitoes, and Bug
“Status Quo” Characters: Bug
Act II
“The Way I Do” Characters: Tootsie Noodles, Mega-Girl, February, and Bug
“Beauty” Characters: Roach and Bugs
“Kick It Up A Notch (Reprise)” Characters: Junior
“Beauty” Characters: Company
Notable Notes:
This production won the 2011 “Best New Work” award from BroadwayWorld’s Chicago theatre awards
Starship is Starkid’s first show that they produced independently from the University of Michigan! The show opened in Chicago, where the following few shows were produced before a majority of the most active members moved to Los Angeles prior to The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals, which opened in 2018
StarKid had their own short segment on MTV that highlighted certain aspects of the production such as Criss’ music and the puppetry (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlnIXIGrjVg). At that point in time, Darren Criss was already a television favorite due to his role as Blaine Anderson on Glee, who joined the cast during its second season
The show’s cast album debuted at number one on Billboard’s Top Cast Albums within three days of its release and at the 134th spot during that week’s Billboard’s Top 200 chart (x)
The opening sequence features cameos from other StarKid members such as Chris Allen, Tyler Brunsman, Richard Campbell, Britney Coleman, Arielle Goldman, Devin Lytle, Lily Marks, Nicholas Joseph Strauss-Matathia, and Brian Rosenthal.The same sequence was narrated by actor Bob Joles (AKA Man Ray in Spongebob Squarepants)
***Fun Facts provided by Abby:
Nick and Dylan think the worst StarKid song is ‘Hideous Creatures’
During a rehearsal, Joey told Nick that he thought the choreography for ‘Beauty’ was boring. Then Nick asked him, “Do you want to choreograph the number?" and then walked out of the room.
There was a theoretical sequel to Starship in which Taz and Up arrest Spaceclaw but get injured by an explosion. Up ends up in the hospital because of his injuries, and while Taz waits for him to heal, she has flashbacks of when they first met and the missions they went on together (Taz’s quinceañera, etc.)
Lauren: I'd like to imagine that Taz has that same hairstyle just in a big quinceañera dress
Once during rehearsal, they were all in a bad mood during ‘Beauty’. Darren wanted to surprise the cast with a visit, so he burst into the theatre singing the song and was just met by silence
At LeakyCon 2014 on Orlando, StarKid were invited as guests and performed a staged reading of a one-act sequel to Starship called Starship: Requiem.
Official synopsis: The story follows the adventures of Mega-Girl the robot and her half-witted Starship Ranger husband. The newlyweds are sucked into a black hole of trouble when they go to visit Mega-Girl’s human-hating family, including her overbearing mother-unit, her jealous sister-unit and the return of her hunky ex-boyfriend-unit. (x)
Cultural Context: 2011
The production’s MTV segment aired a little over a week after Glee’s “Original Song” episode, which featured Kurt and Blaine’s long-awaited first kiss [rip Pavarotti]
Prince William and Kate Middleton get married
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 premieres on July 15th
Beyoncé announces her pregnancy during her performance at the MTV Video Music Awards
“Friday” by Rebecca Black gets released in March
In early May, President Obama announces that Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces
New York becomes the sixth state to legalize same-sex marriage on June 24th
The 9/11 Memorial Museum opens to the public on the tenth anniversary of the attacks
Content Analysis:
During my time on social media, I have found that Starship is one of the StarKid shows that gets discussed the least. Up until the show’s debut in StarKid’s history, the only shows they’ve done were AVPM and AVPS, both major viral hits, and MAMD, which reached popularity partly because it was released after StarKid became known for AVPM. Coming off of their great and unexpected successes with these productions, one would think that there would be a bigger fandom for Starship. It’s their second show that is based on original content rather than being a parody, and the production quality is the strongest in their repertoire, considering the funds they gained from their album sales for MAMD and their growing merchandise sales for their Potter musical series.
Personally, it’s one of my favorite StarKid shows because of the production quality and because the performances are so strong. Joey Richter makes a perfect leading man, and seeing how his general abilities as a performer have grown since MAMD has been delightful. His vocal range got stronger and more pronounced and he has a very confident stage presence, especially since Starship was StarKid’s first production independent of the University of Michigan’s monetary assistance and performance space. Lauren Lopez and Dylan Saunders do such an incredible job at playing two completely different characters themselves within the same show. Saunders plays Tootsie Noodles, a lovable idiot with a heart of gold who falls in love with a robot of all things, while also playing Pincer, the villainous instigator of the plot. Lopez has a similar about-face in character portrayal. She plays Buggette, a bug who’s in a helpless one-sided romantic relationship with Bug, and then two seconds later Lopez transforms into Taz, a kickass Latina Starship Ranger with excellent comedic presence and the undisputed leader of the group before Up regains his confidence as commander.
Starship is very unique in that about half of the characters in the show are portrayed by puppets, which themselves are incredibly designed, but unlike other productions that use puppets, they do not detract from the actor’s performance of the character. StarKid did a very good job in ensuring that the puppets are not a gimmick, but rather a compliment, to their individual actor’s portrayal of the character. All actors who play puppet roles do such a great job of vocalizing their character that, despite the design of the puppet not having the ability to change facial features, make the puppets feel so alive that it’s almost like watching a live-action animated movie (the good kind we’ve yet to experience, not the Disney kind). If there is any one thing that Starship represents for the company as a whole, it’s that character creation and embodiment make up the heartblood of the performances. Aside from the vocal performances, the facial expressions and physicality of the performances add so much to the puppetry performances, even when the focus on the character isn’t their physical representation but their dialogue and place in the plot. Regardless of whether or not the recording is emphasizing the puppet itself during a scene, the actor controlling the puppet is using perfect facial expressions and has matching body language with the puppet, which not only helps the actor stay in character, but gives more life to the puppet itself.
While I am eternally grateful that StarKid to this day ensures that their musical productions are put on YouTube for free, there are two very clear downsides that make themselves especially present in the recording. One is that, unlike in live theatre where any audience member can choose who and what to look at onstage at any given time, the camera is the one dictating what each audience member can focus on. Generally speaking, that isn’t too much of a detriment as most of the shots StarKid uses tend to showcase the most important characters during each scene, which any audience member would do if they were to attend a production live, but because StarKid members are so adept at character performance, it really makes me wish that I can look more at the ensemble’s performances during group scenes, or secondary character’s reactions during smaller scenes in which their character may not be the main focus.
Another thing was the general editing style. Though it did not necessarily take away anything from the performance itself or make watching the recording any less enjoyable, there were some editing choices that I felt were too distracting for what the scene called for in the show. For example, when Crayonder mentions to Taz that he thinks that Commander Up has “gone soft” since the injury he sustained in the Robot War, twice does the camera pause on his face and a record scratch and ‘booooo’ track is heard overlaid onto the scene. I understand the comedic nature of that bit in retrospect, but for a viewer, regardless of whether or not they are watching the show for the first time, it’s very distracting and forcibly shifts the audience’s focus on the story and the characters to a one-off joke. For a first-time viewer, that editing choice especially does not have as much impact as it does for a recurring viewer, as at that point in the story, the audience is only just being introduced to the characters and has no personal connection to Up and his backstory, making the effect of the joke less successful. As well, throughout the recording, and during the first act in particular, the show has a lot of quick and experimental cuts in the frame that I feel don’t allow the audience to sit enough with the action and the performance happening onstage, instead making the audience pay more attention to quick facial gestures rather than allowing the audience to take in the performance of an individual actor or an entire scene as a whole. Overall, the editing just reminds me that I am watching this beautifully done live-performance through a screen rather than being there for the performance in person, and lessens the potential impact of the recording as a whole.
Regardless of the editing, Starship still has some of the best character performances and musical numbers in StarKid’s production history. One that really stood out for me during this rewatch was Denise Donovan’s portrayal of February. Her character gets introduced as a classic ditzy character who initially doesn’t have a lot of agency in the story, but through good writing and likable performance, grows into the most sympathetic and dynamic character in the show. Donovan’s performance makes February more human than the trope she represents, and plays off her character so well that her jokes make her more endearing than a throw-away character that’s used just for laughs and a love-interest. Starkid tends to do this with a lot of the trope-y roles that they write for their productions . The writing and the direction have a very unique way of taking seemingly predictable, one-dimensional characters and fleshing them out into entire human beings with backstories and arcs, making their comedic impact all the more enjoyable because the audience genuinely likes them.