NOW PLAYING:
Tragedy! A Musical Comedy
The Lucille Lortel Theater
121 Christopher St., bet./ Bleecker & Hudson
 to Christopher St.
www.tragedythemusical.com
08/21/07 @ 5:30 p.m.
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In the Q-Box: Mike Johnson
Everyone dies, because they're bad people. It's Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare's bloodiest play, reworked into a Mel Brooks-style musical, accidentally losing iambic pentameter and empathy. Thematic revenge with overtones of pie illustrates that happy endings are for children's books and massage parlors.
Tragedy's writer and director, Mike Johnson, steps into this special Fringe-centric Q-Box to answer our always informative, albeit mostly ridiculous, questions.
What's the best thing about Fringe?
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FringeNYC is letting us perform in a serious off-Broadway theater. That's pretty awesome.
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What's the #1 reason people should come see your show?
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This answer might seem a little biased, but this is the best and funniest show ever written, ever. I can say with no small degree of modesty and humility that no one in the history of mankind will ever write a musical as gut-wrenchingly hilarious as this one. Have you ever seen that Monty Python skit where someone writes the funniest joke in the world and everyone who hears it laughs until they die? This show is to that joke what the Great Wall of China is to my backyard fence. In fact, you probably shouldn't come see the show, because there is a reasonable chance that you will laugh so hard that the foundations of civilization will come tumbling down. The universe itself might shake to pieces.
(Just kidding. But it is funny.)
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Do you have any opening-night rituals?
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I like to run around and pretend to be busy even though my job is really over. Then I play some games and sing a song with my actors to get them loosened up. Then I deliver an epic speech. It's kind of like that speech in Braveheart, except geared towards actors instead of angry medieval Scots. And it's not about killing people. And I don't have a horse. Sometimes, I wish I had a horse.
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What are the craziest performance conditions you've had to work under?
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Opening night of Tragedy! (the first production) two actors completely lost their voices and the actress whose character gets her hand chopped off actually smashed the bones in her fingers and had to go the emergency room. An assistant stage manager read for her and the assistant director dubbed all of the lost voices with her own. I was conducting the pit orchestra and I sang for all the people without voices. It was awesome.
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How did you get involved with the arts?
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In the seventh grade I tried out for a small role in a children's version of The Secret Garden. I had two lines and I loved it.
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THE STATS:
High school attended: Woodberry Forest School, Woodberry Forest, VA
Favorite Class: Advanced Acting and Directing (But if we're talking serious classes...I liked Physics).
Next-up on Netflix queue: I WISH I had Netflix. If this is more of a hypothetical, I've been wanting to rent The Fifth Element to watch it again. I love that movie.
Playing on his iPod right now: I don't own an Ipod. I'm the world's worst musician. I am greatly ashamed. I've been listening to some Blue October on my FM radio, though... whenever they come on.
Favorite pizza topping: Hawaiian. Mmmm pineapple.
Last good book he read:
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
All-time, hands-down favorite piece of theater: Titus Andronicus
Harry Potter House: Hufflepuff. Hufflepuff gets no love.
Who complains more: Luke Skywalker or Hamlet?: Unfair question! Hamlet only has four hours to complain, whereas Luke has closer to eight hours over three movies. The answer is probably Hamlet, but I think that Luke wins for that goofy face he makes when Darth Vader tells him that he's his father.
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