For music lovers, there’s a certain joy in being a participant in the making of the sound, whether that’s joining in on a song’s chorus or strumming your guitar. The Rubicon Theatre’s upcoming production of A Cowboy Lullaby aims to recreate that cozy feeling with their own rendition of a campfire quintet — friends and neighbors warming their bones after a long day of work. The musical style, as the title of the show denotes, is the comfortable nostalgia of early American life in the West.
The creative team behind the show is James O’Neil and Dan Wheetman, both familiar faces at the Rubicon. Wheetman says the seed for Cowboy Lullaby came from an impromptu sing-along after a past production: “We had a closing night party, everyone had their guitars, everyone was singing,” he says. “It fell into cowboy tunes. And everyone knew a couple.” He and O’Neil began to engineer a show based on this genre, encompassing what Wheetman calls the “quintessential American myth of the cowboy — that sense of freedom, independence, and space.”
The show is a musical journey rather than a traditional theatrical narrative. Performer Sylvie Davidson describes diving into the poetry of the western culture: “How do we tell these stories? So much of it is about the love of the land and the grief of seeing it change.” As the show evolved, the writing team had to whittle the list of over 500 songs down to a line-up of tunes that would tell that story.
A Cowboy Lullaby is designed to be an uplifting evening of songs of the Old West, and for those looking to participate, you may get your chance! See the show and join in around the campfire December 4–22 at the Rubicon Theatre in downtown Ventura. See rubicontheatre.org/events/cowboy-lullaby for tickets and details.
