The Out of the Box Family Comes Together for ‘Family Album’
Musical Theater Icon Joe Iconis’s Tunes Take the Stage at Santa Barbara’s SOhO on October 27
Last fall, Samantha Eve, Artistic Director of Out of the Box Theatre Company, and I saw Joe Iconis (writer of cult favorite musical, Be More Chill) play his newest collection of songs: Family Album. Each track is a contemporary-musical-theater-inspired short story that creates a character and illustrates their world — some absurd, some hilariously grim, all clever and incredibly witty. Out of the Box now brings this unique theatrical concert to Santa Barbara audiences for a one-night-only engagement at SOhO on October 27.
Eve describes Family Album as part showtune cabaret, part rock-and-roll jamboree. The songs run the gamut from the silliness of partying with your cat instead of going out to the agitation of a housewife huffing cleaning fumes to the lethal ennui of a Brooklyn hipster. And dinosaurs. “I think [Iconis’s] work is representative of what we think of as ‘contemporary musical theater,’” says Eve, “a genre that most likely wouldn’t exist as we know it without his influence.” Iconis performs Family Album with a group of artist friends and collaborators, just as Eve will feature performers from the Out of the Box stable of singers. “There is very little I love more than bringing together my incredibly talented friends,” she says. “It’s how I believe this show was written to be performed.”
One of the questions Family Album considers is what lasts. “One of the most beautiful and tragic things about theater is its impermanence,” says Eve. “[It] will only exist in the world for a short period of time, but the impact it makes lives on…. The influence art and music can have on all of us is a recurring theme in Family Album, both looking to the past with nostalgia or to the future as we question whether or not the art we put into the world and its impact will outlast us.”
See Family Album on Sunday, October 27, at SOhO Restaurant & Music Club in Santa Barbara. See sohosb.com/events/out-of-the-box-theatre-co-presents-family-album for more info and tickets.
