Inside Darren Criss' Team StarKid: From 'A Very Potter Musical' to SPACE Tour
As Team StarKid took the stage Saturday night (Nov. 26) at Irving Plaza, they did so in a cheeky parody of 'N Sync's second-ever American tour -- something many fans in the room were too young to remember. On that tour 'N Sync entered in slow motion and wearing space helmets -- as did StarKid Saturday evening, complete with rolling fog and a slow reveal of the seven troupe members finishing their month-long trek across the country.
It's not unrealistic to compare Team StarKid to the first iterations of the iconic boyband, who in 1998, when 'N Sync was pulling the spaceman stunt, was not an album-selling, pop-culture phenomenon just yet. They were, however, a cult hit among young people, part of a mass wave of new pop coming to surface after the grunge era of the early '90s, poised to take over the musical landscape. They were undeniable, and the masses of fans that similarly support StarKid might enable the group to shake up the pop culture map in a huge way.
StarKid isn't a boyband, or even close to it, but they're on the same precipice as the boybands of yesteryear, tapped into a hyper-connected youth culture and a tad confusing to the adults in the room. The group defies easy explanation, the kind of thing you often have to fall head-first into to actually get their appeal. At the base, they're a performance troupe that specializes in pop-culture reference laden, emotional musicals, who springboarded to fame from a viral video hit with their "A Very Potter Musical" in 2009 to expand to fully original works and a spiraling fandom that supports the group and individual members' projects. One co-founder, Darren Criss, who is best known now as Blaine Anderson on " Glee," was first known to his loyal following as Harry Potter. Criss' success may have brought them to greater national attention, but those in the know understand that Criss is just one moving part of the great StarKid machine, and have been tracking the StarKid triumphs across a variety of creative avenues with a fanatical pitch not easily matched, except perhaps by the StarKid performers themselves, who mirror back that enthusiasm with intensity and hold their fans above all else. (Instead of partying with his costars and celebrating two successful New York shows, Joey Richter, who played Ron Weasley in the Potter musicals, left the double-header show with his visiting parents in tow to surprise a young fan at her birthday party in the area Saturday night. That's not unusual for the StarKids -- last year Criss flew across the country in the midst of Golden Globes weekend to sing for a teen fan's celebration.)
Read the full article at the source.
The interviewer, Rae Votta, also writes for the Village Voice and Logo, and can be found on tumblr here (personal) and here.