Good news, music fans! The complete performance of Super Smash Opera Presents: Aria Kart has been posted on YouTube by the good people at MAGfest.
Anyone who missed the live show in January can now see the next best thing: a video, filmed from the audience’s perspective. They’ve even adjusted the sound so you can hear all our jokes over the crowd’s laughter and other adoring sounds.
For those of you who missed some of my previous blogs, Aria Kart is a comedic parody opera about the Mario Kart video games. It uses classical and operatic music to tell an original story about the beloved Nintendo characters and their attempts to win that big race.
If you are one of those folks who missed my other blogs, you may be asking, “Why are you telling us this?” “What does this have to do with you?” “Why are these blog updates so infrequent?” The answer to the first two questions is this: I am one of the six founding members of Super Smash Opera. I was the story director, graphic designer, and small puppet/small prop maker for both the original Super Smash Opera and for Aria Kart. I even composed lyrics for a few of the songs. If you like the stuff I post on this website, odds are good that you will like my work on Aria Kart as well.
BWT, You don’t need to see the first opera to follow the second one, so you can pick it up at any time. Even now.
Okay, now the everyone has had a chance to see the video, I can tell you a bit about my part of the creative process that brought this ridiculous work to life. I don’t have a lot of special insight into all the many parts of this project, but I can journal a bit about my own contributions, specifically the writing, graphics, puppets, and props.
The Writing
Putting together a story for Aria Kart was tricky. It was probably the hardest creative project I ever worked on. For the first opera, I jotted down a bunch of character notes and story structure ideas that were meant to be draft pitches for the whole team to consider. We ended up using all of them, plus a lot of my dialogue. I was named Story Director after the project was over as a way to quantify these contributions. For Aria Kart, I was nominated Story Director right from the start. I thought having an official title would make the job easier. Looking back, I’m surprised that someone of my age and experience would ever think that having authority ever made anything easier.
To clarify, I am not the author of either of these operas. I simply try to assemble a story from all our song and story ideas. I want plot, character, and dialogue to come from all of the creative team members. Of course, it gets tricky to balance ideas from so many people. When a large group works on something, it can be hard to keep the final project from looking inconsistent and patchy. But, the team gave me a lot of good ideas to work with and encouraged me to use my own story-telling style in the process. Liz and Bonnie frequently reminded me, “We like your writing. It’s a good fit for us. That’s why we asked you to do this.” I doubt I could have finished anything if I hadn’t heard this sentiment as often as I did.
The original Super Smash Opera was very lighthearted and a bit more slapstick. But, it also included a few genuine heartfelt moments too. And I was surprised at how much the audience responded to both the warmth and the humor. People frequently told us that one of the soft songs or a sentimental moment made them choke up or even cry. And they liked the opera even more for provoking that reaction. Yes, parodies, especially video game parodies, are usually told with more superficial humor. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s usually a good fit. But there’s no reason why some parodies can’t have a little more depth too. I felt like the audience had given us permission to be a little more sincere this time.
Even if this story had more drama, comedy was still a huge part of Aria Kart. We crammed as many jokes as we could into the dialogue and acting without making the show feel forced. Reference humor became inevitable for a team of gamers with great memories for trivia. I know, reference humor is often (sometimes accurately) criticized as a lazy way to win people over. But the rules change when you’re making a parody. Writing a parody and not loading it up with reference humor is like going to a waterpark to sit on the grass.
The Graphics
Writing for Aria Kart may have been tougher, but designing the graphics was much easier. For Super Smash Opera, I redrew the main poster image eight times before coming up with something we could all agree with. I pretty much nailed the Aria Kart poster on the first try, with only three or four minor edits made before showtime. The posters were finished early enough for us to get a discount at the printers and it adapted easily to T-shirts and other merchandise.
Making projector graphics for the stage was an interesting piece of the project. Unlike Super Smash Opera, which required eight different backdrops, Aria Kart only needed four backdrops. After all, in the game, Mario Kart cup races only have four tracks. Of course, we needed to communicate movement as much as possible, so each of those backgrounds also needed to be animated for the racing sequences. I experimented with animated layers and 3D perspective, but a simple scrolling GIF turned out to be the most effective method.
The Puppets
The Shell Trio. Those three Koopa Troopa puppets are probably the finest puppets I’ve ever designed and sewn. Our project manager, Bonnie Bogovich, has a legendary love of puppets, especially puppets in opera. She usually envisions some quirky, adorable puppet scenes while these projects are still in infancy. She is right to do so. The koopas were added early and their designs easily lent themselves to plush puppets. To make a character puppet, I adapted a method I once saw in a documentary about fur suits. I carved each head from a foam block, then stretched fleece over them. The bodies are regular plush, but the arms and legs are attached with flat seams so they can flail more easily on stage. Since their colors were so important to the shell song, I gave each puppet a colorful scarf to match their boots and shell.
The Props
I was never supposed to make go-karts. At first, we weren’t going to use karts at all. The performers were going to hold steering wheels and mime the rest of the movements. But we needed another visual cue to depict racing on stage. The team was worried about giving me one more job to do so close to show time. However, I had two things that made me want to take on this final challenge. I had time and I had an idea. I am not a performer and I am not a musician. So, when the script was completed, a lot of my time was freed up, while for others, the work was just beginning. Sewing puppets had given me the idea to build something I called “the wearable box kite design:” cloth structures held in shape by wooden sticks for bones. They would be easy to make. Using colored cloth instead of cardboard or other stiff material meant we didn’t have to waste time or money painting them. Plus, cloth could be folded down small to fit in our cars more easily than any ridged materials. In fact, the karts packed down so small, I was able to put them right in my suitcase on top of my clothes (which made unpacking at the hotel a little awkward, but what can you do?) Also, every seam on the karts were just straight lines. Any seamstress will tell you that a straight line is the easiest thing to sew. I finished my prototype kart in under two hours.
What does the future hold for Super Smash Opera? I’m sure we’ll be performing Aria Kart again someday (most likely at the next MAGfest in 2019.) Please check in with the Super Smash Opera website for more stories and announcements. Rock on, music fans.
