By the Watertown Splash staff

      Julia Albain is resident company member of StarKid, performing as Crabbe in “A Very Potter Musical” and “A Very Potter Sequel” as well as Vicki Vale in “Holy Musical B@man!” She directed the Space tour in the fall of 2011, and is back directing the group’s 21-city cross-country spring tour, known as Apocalyptour. She spoke from one of the two StarKid tour buses as it carried the 20-plus cast and crew members toward Boise. [Note: Interview transcript edited for content and clarity.]

     Watertown Splash: If people have not seen the StarKid shows online and they only know what their kids and friends are talking about, what should they is the live performance like?    

     Julia Albain: In a lot of ways, it's a very musical theater production -- but it's not a musical per se. There is a story, but there's not a full of script. It's not a new original show, it’s basically a revue of songs from all of our different shows, but because we are a theater group we like we try to add a theatrical homage, just because that's what we do.

     So, it's an odd duck, but from the reactions we've got from the audience, it's fun for the people who do know the songs. But I also think it's really fun for people who have never seen anything of ours before because you get a little taste of our humor, you get a little taste of the music, and you get a little taste of the general aesthetic of the shows we create.

    Watertown Splash: How have the crowds been?

    JA: It's been great. In Seattle, we sold out. In Portland, it wasn't as many, but it was still a good house. In Vancouver last night, it was awesome! In Canada they are always so excited. ... We got news the other day that we sold out Roseland in New York [capacity: 3,200]. That's crazy. So we get to end the tour in a sold-out house in New York, so that's great.

      Watertown Splash: I can imagine when you are putting this together, you are saying, “I think we can do well, I think this is worth doing.” But you never know until you start selling tickets.

      JA: The other part of the story that I think slips by sometimes is that [the tour] is so DIY. We've completely self-produced, and planned, and booked, and routed this tour, and we’re just a group of 25-year-olds. It's a gamble. You're putting your company’s name and work, but it's a gamble financially because we don't have any type of big production house or backing or that sort of thing. 

      Watertown Splash: Before Potter went viral, what was the career path that you were planning?

      JA: I graduated with Darren [Criss] in his class in 2009 with a BFA actor. We graduated and we all went off our separate ways. ... I moved to New York after I graduated and lived in New York for a year. We were living in New York as [AVPM] gained momentum over that year. Then a year later, we went back to do the sequel, and it was after the sequel there was this buzz that kind of started that maybe we should get in one space and kind of do this for real.

     Some of us were in LA, some of us were in New York, some of us were just graduating at Michigan. We were everywhere. So that summer of 2010, we decided to go to Chicago. ... It was really September 2010 when we all got ourselves in Chicago, and that was when we said, “OK, we’re here, let's make a company out of this. Let’s try to do this more frequently, and let’s see what we can build out of this.

     Watertown Splash: So why was the decision made to keep that same Internet format, as opposed to setting up shop somewhere, like New York or Los Angeles or Chicago or Boston and doing the same show for a live audience?

     JA: Because the Internet was where our base was. That's where our audience is. ... Clearly we tapped into some sort of vain and so we wanted to keep going with that and see if we're on to something new, to see if we were on to a new format for producing theater. Because we’re not really a theater company. We have a hard time sometimes labeling what we are. We’re a little bit of a few different things.

     The touring idea came in the same way because we have an audience everywhere ... We’re all trained as actors. We’re performers, so we want to be performing. We want to be doing the work. It's not fulfilling to do one show or two shows a year and put them online.

     Watertown Splash: It's not like you're a film-making troupe, you are a performance troupe.

     JA: It might be something to try one day, to do a show and run it for a few weeks, then film it for online and be done with it. We're anxious to go onto the next thing.

     Watertown Splash: What's the status of “Harry Potter 3”?

     JA: The age-old question. The boys have had the story for a long time, and they're always working on it, if nothing else for their own amusement and enjoyment. It's just always going to be an issue of scheduling. If it ever happens, it will probably happen very fast and very fury furious and at the last minute, but you never know. But it's there. It exists. In their hearts and in their minds

   Watertown Splash: Have other acting troupes and companies approached you and asked “Hey, how are you doing that?”

   JA: We always end up talking to different people, meeting with different companies in Chicago. Some of the bigger companies have been really generous, wanting to sit down and let us pick their brains and then pick our brains. It's nice. It’s getting a blend of new information and sometimes watching these other companies very curiously examine what we are doing and not quite understand it – we don't quite understand it sometimes.

     Watertown Splash: How do you feel going from a performance background to directing and being the in-charge person?

     JA: I had directed in college as well. I kind of do both, I always consider myself both. I have performed in most the shows that we've done ... I was eager to get back to directing, but this format is an interesting challenge. It is very different than directing a play or even directing the musical. It's a concert show and you’re working concert venues. And we also have our own aesthetic to it ... With the last tour, it was the adrenaline of the challenge with all of us. It just felt like the craziest thing in the world, but I think we just thrive on that at times. We get high off of that.

    Watertown Splash: When you are performing live, are you getting the pop from the audience in the first few chords of the song as if you are Led Zeppelin breaking into “Stairway to Heaven”?

     JA: Oh yeah. They know the words. Just the first intro to the song, it was awesome, the first few chords would play and the audience would jump to its feet because it was a song they love and they sing along. It's very, very cool.

    Watertown Splash: I would just imagine that you guys are the envy of everybody who has ever been in the college theater troupe,  because this is what everyone dreams of doing. It is your work, but you get to hang out with your friends and and get a bit of a paycheck from it, too.

     JA: It's so true. We were just talking about this the other day. About the things you think about having when you are in college, and how nothing is promised. None of us were ever promised to be able to work with our friends. That's just not part of the equation. So that wasn't ever something to think about or aspire to. So we are beyond lucky in a lot of ways.

     Watertown Splash: It seems like it's all going extremely well in every way shape and form.

     JA: I was just thinking the other day how we don't experience sometimes the width and depth of our audience, because it is all online. But when we do these tours, it's when you really see it. Because when we do these live shows in Chicago [for taping], we can only ever get 150 people in the theater.  On this tour and in the  previous tour, you can just feel the audience and see it in the people. It's kind of amazing to just see however many tens of thousands -- when it's all said and done -- young people getting excited about theater, it doesn't just happen.

     (For information about StarKid and its tour and videos, go to www.teamstarkid.com.)

--June 7, 2012--