Team StarKid alums Lauren Lopez and Julia Albain have just announced their newest project – The Moms: Fannypackin’ Heat. We spoke to Lauren Lopez for more details on this original comedy play that the pair first developed in college.
StarKid ladies Lauren Lopez and Julia Albain have presented fans with the first look at their newest venture with a YouTube trailer for The Moms: Fannypackin’ Heat. This live production, a re-vamped concept that the pair originally developed in Basement Arts – the University of Michigan’s student-run drama society – is set to run for several weeks in December, and we spoke briefly to Lauren Lopez about the show.
Hypable: Is The Moms a sketch style thing or a comedy play? I’ve seen a lot of StarKids tweeting about how it was a Basement Arts thing originally.
Lauren: It’s a full length comedic play, based off these two characters that Julia and I came up with Freshman year. Our junior year at University of Michigan, we took those characters and wrote a play (with other characters!) around them and produced it in Basement Arts.
Hypable: What made you decide to re-develop it now? What was the original production like?
Lauren: Ever since then [college] we’ve been talking about re-working the show and mounting it professionally, it’s just that the timing was never right UNTIL NOW! The show is very different from the one we did at University of Michigan, but we kept the same foundation and a lot of the same characters in it.
Hypable: Is the cast just you and Julia?
Lauren: There are seven cast members and we are in the middle of auditions now! The cast should be finalized by Tuesday or so… people are too good so it makes the job very difficult!
The Moms is 2013’s second non-StarKid branded collaboration by Lauren Lopez and Julia Albain as a production team. Earlier this year, they headed up a group which developed and performed Judas Redux – a re-imagined run of Stephen Adly Guirgis’s The Last Days of Judas Iscariot. Like The Moms, this was a play that the group that was later to become Team StarKid first put on in college.
The Moms: Fannypackin’ Heat will open at the Chicago Dramatists Theater for a run of 15 performances from December 5. Tickets go onsale October 12, with a VIP option available including perks such priority seating and “awkward family photos” with the cast. The Moms is written and produced by Julia Albain and Lauren Lopez, with Cory Lubowich also joining as a producer and Daniel Strauss as director.
The Moms will also feature music and underscoring by Nick Gage, the featured composer for several past shows including Holy Musical B@man and Airport For Birds. The Moms team has already released a comedy single, “Living The Dream,” in advance of the show. The song, by Gage and featuring another StarKid, Jaime Lyn Beatty, is available now on BandCamp.
For tickets, merchandise and additional information, you can head over to TheMomsPlay official website.