INTERGALACTIC TRANSFER STUDENTS

Plan 9 meets A Nation of Millions

By JENNA SCHERER

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Talking goats, breakdancing. Yeah, you heard me. Talking goats. Breakdancing.

How about this: hip-hop opera. Stage three supermassive black hole. Prehistoric dinosaur planet. Party spaceship. DRUGS.

If this assortment of plot points doesn't at least cause you to throw a glance over at Intergalactic Transfer Students, you've got a serious fun allergy. You should really get that looked at.

A hip-hopera set to take the stage at the BCA, Intergalactic Transfer Students is pretty much exactly as weird and awesome as it sounds. It's the glow-in-the-dark brainchild of Papa Bakes and Virtue, scions of local hip-hop collective Fameless Fam.

By day, they're Eric Baker and Will Kowall, two Emerson students who first bonded over impromptu freestyling sessions in Boston Common. According to Baker, the two couldn't be more different in their artistic approaches. "Will has a bit more of an Elliott Smith vibe than me. Whereas I'm really on the other side—I can't even take myself seriously."

Which is exactly how the idea for a rap about a seven-tentacled jock from outer space came about: Kowall suggested a deadly serious topic for a song, and Baker was having none of it. "I was like, 'Dude, please, can we write anything else? Aliens. Anything.' And so we ended up writing 'Tulon Drox.'"

"Tulon Drox" became one of 19 tracks on ITS, a concept album that Kowall describes as "a typical American story, but set on other planets." Part Heavy Metal and part The Little Prince, the plot follows Bakes and Virtue on a planet-hopping intergalactic odyssey. They're two humans out to save Earth from the evil clutches of the Whack Emcees, commercialized rappers whose lame-ass lyrics are literally causing Armageddon.

It was Baker's idea to turn it into a full-on theatrical production. "The two of us could just do it onstage by ourselves, but I thought, hey, let's add a dozen dancers and some crazy costumes and lighting and sound effects. Let's really go all out."

With that in mind, Baker and Kowall amassed their army. They enlisted Christian Svenson, an Emerson alum, to design costumes ranging from green aliens to volcano women for ITS' ensemble, and choreographer Wendy O'Byrne to come up with dance moves to match the insanity of the album's ideas. Then there's set designer Mark Jones, who used to repair military planes in flight (no joke) and is now putting together ITS' spaceship.

"Some of the calls I get are like, 'Eric! We just found this disco ball on Craigslist and peeled off all the mirrors and painted it in blacklight paint. Don't worry, we're making a cool hula-hoop ring for it,'" recalls Baker with a grin.

O'Byrne says that the whole hip-hopera idea was hard to sell at first. "When we were auditioning dancers, everyone was like, 'What is this?!' But now, every time I go back to the dance studio where I teach, people are like, 'Oh dude dude dude! Do you have any more spots in the show?'"

But it all paid off in the end. "What drives this production forward is the sentiment that's in the show—that you may not have the big sponsorship and the airtime, but you just have to do it because you love it," says Svenson. "And if you stick to it, somebody's going to notice that there's something right with the world."

INTERGALACTIC TRANSFER STUDENTS
WED 2.3.10–SAT 2.6.10
BCA CALDERWOOD PAVILION
539 TREMONT ST., BOSTON
617.933.8600
WED–SAT 8:30PM
$5-$10
INTERGALACTICTRANSFERSTUDENTS.COM
BOSTONTHEATRESCENE.COM