I had the privilege of working for IBP in the summer of 2000, stage-managing (for the first time ever) their yearly Tamalalia, the musical extravaganzas created by and starring company member Tamarie Cooper. At least I think it was 2000; the details are hazy in the after-buzz of 200+cues in two hours, in tap dance routines and rehearsals in warehouses around town, in swimming and drinking with the company, in learning about southern literature, music (Troy introduced me to The Black Rider), art cars, and the reality of great friends making great art.

IBP doesn’t need a eulogy from me; I knew them far too little to be granted that privilege. Slay cited The Houston Chronicle’s Everett Evans contribution from 7/25/07, and their Wikipedia entry has much of their history, including the genesis of their name (In the Jungle of Cities by Bertolt Brecht), while youtube has a pictoral memorial of IBP.

Perhaps the best eulogy (aside from one optimistic myspace friend who says “If you were a soap opera we could bring you back as your lobotomized, amnesiac Siamese twin. Please consider this.") is an excerpt from founding Artistic Director Jason Nodler’s IBP Bible
(written in 1993 and posted 7/27/07):

The time has come for those of us working in theater to stop wringing our hands over the dominance of movies, popular music, the internet or any other form of what we have traditionally regarded as "cheap entertainment." There are lessons to be learned from these popular entertainments, and our deafness is not only to these lessons but also to our history as an art form. Theater was once a 'popular art'. That means two things: it was popular and it was art. Today's theater regularly features one or the other aspect, but rarely – almost never – does it feature both. Bob Dylan, widely considered to belong to that rare breed of serious pop artists, once said, "Why pay for something if you're not going to be entertained? Are you going to pay to go get whipped? And, if you do pay to go get whipped, aren't you going to be entertained?" Those of us called artists and those called entertainers could take a lesson from each other. The evenly held scorn between so-called highbrow and lowbrow theater artists is beneath us. Worse still, it leaves each of our performances only half-realized and our seats half-empty.

The artistic director of a San Francisco theater said, "Theater has to be better than dinner." Our competition, working in theater, is not each other. And our target audience ought not to be the patrons who regularly attend that theater which is more successful than our own. Our competition is dinner and our target audience ought to be anyone with a stomach. These people with stomachs never think twice about eating, drinking, dancing, swimming, bowling or even attending a movie. They come fully equipped with interests, desires, problems, passions and appetites. It is our charge to find our way to them and not vice versa.

We at Infernal Bridegroom have resolved to marry the highbrow to the lowbrow, to create a serious entertainment which is both popular and art, to be better than dinner, to excite, engage, challenge and, indeed, register those ninety percent or more young people, of all ages, who have turned their backs on the theater that has turned its back on them. Bertolt Brecht said, "Real innovation attacks the roots." We have resolved to create a new theater for all those people who have been insulted or, worse, ignored by the old one.

Our success, thus far, in the area of audience development has been remarkable and gratifying. We have built a new audience by entertaining without pandering, challenging without preaching, by injecting serious, relevant, even vital issues of our day with the increasingly absent element of fun. These new audiences, many of whom had never seen a play in their lives, are paying to get whipped. And they are entertained.