Lurking in the shadows at the intersection of horror films and musical theater sits a gem of a show.

The standout of the 2015 Hollywood Fringe, which I previously wrote about, “Alien vs. Musical”  has been lying dormant since their show closed, waiting to pounce.

It mostly comes out at night.

Mostly.

The two creators, Erik Przytulski and Steve Troop, have launched a Kickstarter campaign intent on raising the funds needed to bring their little monster back to life for the 2016 Hollywood Fringe Festival. From there they will craft the perfect killing machine setting its sights on its next victim: New York City, where they hope it will burrow inside the cold black core of the Big Apple.

 

The Kickstarter campaign sets out to raise $15,000 for production costs and will run until April 22nd.

“Alien vs Musical” won Best World Premiere Production, Outstanding Songwriting and the Encore Producers Award at the 2015 Fringe Festival. All were very well deserved. The show is laugh out loud funny, features great songs and it doesn’t skimp on the horror factor. It is a loving cross between two genres with only minor overlap (“Sweeney Todd” comes to mind, for better or worse).

The success of the show validated the passions of the two creators: Przytulski has written several musicals before and Troop is a cartoonist and puppet maker, and this show allowed these two lifelong friends to collaborate and work together with very positive results.

“We like to think of last year’s show as the trailer, and what we have now as the actual show,” says Troop.

“Alien vs. Musical” takes place in the Land of Musicals, a world where all of musical theater lives. Maria from “Sound of Music”, Annie from “Annie”, Jean Valjean from “Les Miserables”, Mark from “RENT” and half a dozen more characters are all gathered together for Effie (from “Dreamgirls”) birthday party.

Annie decides to give Effie a mysterious egg that she just found. Of course, horror movies don’t exist in the Land of Musicals, so when the egg hatches and all hell breaks loose what are these characters to do besides try to make sense of what’s happening to them through song and dance?

On a personal note, watching the musical descend from the shiny happy world where nothing bad ever happens to…well…death, destruction and one incredible Queen Bitch crashing the party was an absolute joy to behold. One of the most enjoyable evenings of theater I have ever had.

So why would they want to mess with success?

“Last year felt kind of small. We only saw a small part of the ‘Land of Musicals’,” the two explained to me. “This year we’ve more than doubled the amount of characters.”

“There’s much more of a good thing,” says Troop. “We don’t want to mess with what we have, so we took what we had and felt like there was an opportunity to explore in more depth into some of our lead characters. We’re getting a little bit more of their backstory.”

The Kickstarter campaign gives the show an opportunity to stretch its wings.

“By helping us the money immediately goes to our 2016 Fringe production,” says Przytulski. “The costs that we raise will cover the regular costs of the show — renting the theater, paying the cast and crew — and then we will bring in a band, add more music to the show, hire a choreographer and up the production level. And Steve is creating brand new versions of all the creatures and props.”

“Last year was found parts,” explains Troop. “This is a step closer to what we envision.”

Troop is planning on improving upon his original Alien design and adding a lot of functionality to it, as well as making it the same size and scale as the one from the films. “It’s going to look like the alien we’re used to seeing: Shiny skin, mucus dripping from her mouth. A lot that we planned to do the first time around but ran out of money and time.”

“This allows us to get a budget to really show what these creatures can do. The alien’s supposed to be scary. The human fear comes from the weird jeopardy that these characters are in. We can really try to deliver more on that.”

“We’ve always envisioned the Land of Musicals to be a very large place,” says Przytulski. “Musicals have been around forever. The fun thing about this show is that you watch the characters journey through different parts of the Land of Musicals while they’re warning people about the alien threat.”

“There’s more characters and more alien interaction. It takes theme of ‘Alien vs Musical’ to its fullest extent,” says Przytulski.

“We know what we want to do for the rest of our lives,” Przytulski continues. “We need to do this now. This is our test. Our trial by fire. We have such a passion and drive for this show. This is the beginning to getting a lot more ideas out there and new shows for the future. We’re really excited about this.”

The “Alien vs Musical” Kickstarter campaign has been designated a “Project We Love” by Kickstarter. It runs thru Friday April 22nd with the goal of raising $15,000. They money will fund a run at the 2016 Hollywood Fringe Festival, to be held June 9 – 26, 2016. The show is wonderful and very deserving of your support.