NeoFuturists: There Are Balloons But Not Really For The Kids

If there was a show described as “Rocky Horror Picture Show mixed with newspaper reporting, the avant-garde, political commentary, and Nutella,” would you believe it? Well, there is, and it’s from the BU NeoFuturist Project, based off the NeoFuturist movement, which was founded by Greg Allen in Chicago in 1988. The movement has since spread and spawned groups in many different parts of the country, including here at BU.

The NeoFuturist movement is a collective of performers, writers, and directors who put together skits for shows. For the BU group, there are around 30 plays performed in an hour and a half time. During the performance, the audience chooses the order in which the plays will be performed by selecting a number.
NeoFuturist president Ariana Katz (CAS ’12) said, “The first number we hear, we pop that balloon, do the play, let the audience scream for the next one, until we finish all the plays.”
The BU NeoFuturist Project was founded by Phil Silberman (CAS ’11) and Joe Gels (SED ’09), in the spring of 2009. It began as a part of another group, Wandering Minds, but soon expanded into its own student group in spring 2010, when the cast and interest in NeoFuturism started to grow. Silberman describes the performances as a “series of interesting looks into the lives of the performers.” Eddie Saviano (COM ’13) said, “The show is fast pace. It thrives off of high energy of the cast members and especially the audience.”

A major part of the show and difficulty for the case it is putting together the skits. Travis Holloway (CAS ’11) explained that for him it is hard, but that “I have that I may be just thinking of, something I notice while going about my daily routine, and sometimes, I just get an idea of a play.”

The group pitches their different plays at rehearsals and members usually add from the input they hear to what they had originally in mind. From there, it is only a matter of practice, which they have been doing a lot of. This weekend’s upcoming production is titled “Popped Culture,” and according to Katz, “President Brown masks, Justin Bieber, strip teases, telephone calls, Thanksgiving, beating each other up, some sweet choreography, Le Tigre, and Yakety Sax” will all be involved. Friday’s performance will be happening in KCB 101 at 8:30pm. Saturday’s performance is at the same time, but in BU Central. Both shows are FREE. (And don’t worry, they will be adding 10 skits to the Saturday show, so it’ll be like it was different.)

If you are interested in joining, the BU NeoFuturist group will be having auditions in January and can be contacted at buneofuturists@gmail.com. You can find them on their Facebook page, too.