Yellow Tape Construction Company
Head count: Co-artistic directors Amanda Butterfield and Jonathon Morgan head the company; other associated artists help out. They’ve even got an intern.
Background check: For Hobbled, the first Austin show, Yellow Tape brought in the Lonestar Rollergirls to pump up the crowds. They followed it up with Come Home, an “indie-folk, road-trip musical.”
Coming up: I Love My Dead Gay Son: The Musical!, running June 15–July 1, is a musical version of Heathers, that classic Eighties teen angst-fest about suicide and shoulder pads.
The name: “It’s construction, it’s hard work,” says Morgan. “It’s an infrastructure of an organization that works hard from the ground up.”
All according to spec, former Clevelandites and Yellow Tape leaders Butterfield and Morgan are testing the foundations of local theatre with their original musicals.
For starters, inviting the Lonestar Rollergirls to skate through last year’s Hobbled gave them a broader-than-usual audience base.
“It’s about creating work for people other than ourselves,” says Butterfield. “I actually think we’ve managed to do that pretty well. Some of our audience members have been NASCAR watchers. … It’s about theatre reaching people on a gut level.”
Plans for the future range from the adventurous – “There have been rumors of a rock opera in our future,” says Morgan – to the practical. Butterfield, who has a dance background, says they also want to get their own space with a sprung floor, possibly even with free classes.
“I think it would be good for the dance community just to have a dedicated dance space,” Morgan says.
For now, Butterfield looks forward to opening I Love My Dead Gay Son, which she choreographed. “This show is really funny, because I decided to stage it in the manner of jazzified, Fosse-fied, modern-dance style.”
This article appears in June 16 • 2006.