At ComFest in Columbus this weekend, (a gigantic festival run entirely by volunteers with 60,000 visitors a day and no corporate sponsorship) at 2:30 on Saturday afternoon, performing on the smallest of 6 outdoor stages, Hugs & Kisses attracted about two hundred 18-35 year olds who were all cooler, hipper, and more excited than pretty much everyone I see at the theaters these days. How do they do it? Well, for one thing, Hugs & Kisses probably aren't theatre, they're probably a band, but you coulda fooled me.
Hugs & Kisses have got to be considered performance art of some kind. True, they record songs and perform them, and they do so in clubs where bands play, and they hang-out with bands, and work in places where bands play. But what I saw on Saturday was, to my eye, a play with songs - albeit one of the oddest and most entertaining plays I've ever seen.
The story revolves around a chicken whose egg has been taken from her by a cop (played by Bustown rapper Envelope). He also busts our heroes for singing and dancing in public. After family services (dressed like Jason from Friday the 13th) wrest the egg from its mother's clutches, the cop takes it home, eats it, and falls asleep, at which point Hugs & Kisses break into his place, and in a cathartic moment of violence, cut him open and remove the egg. They return the egg to the chicken and everybody sings and dances a bit a the end.
It was a little more complicated but that's the general gist of things. Of course, none of the "actors" spoke any lines, they were all lip-syncing to a recording that included the dialogue, sound effects, and music. The voices were all cartoony and hysterical and the show was laugh-out-loud funny. There was a lot of cursing, but it was all bleeped out. The songs are bizarre and you can hear some at the Hugs n Kisses MySpace. There was also a nice, little article about them last weekend which can be read here.
So what's the lesson? I don't know. What I do know is that all the people I think should be at our shows were at theirs.
