Ten years in the making.
Nine months after its New York showcase.
Eight stops across the country.
Seven days and counting …
This time next week, Salvage Vanguard Theater will be deep in launch mode for the national tour of The Intergalactic Nemesis. Since its birth in the caffeinated confines of Little City a decade ago, SVT’s homegrown spoof of sci-fi serials from the Golden Age of Radio has been a hit with local audiences, and now SVT is hoping it will be with audiences across the land. On Friday, Sept. 8, the tour blasts off with a UT Performing Arts Center-sponsored show at Hogg Auditorium, after which the show begins a four-month mission to seek out new life and new civilizations – or at least new fans – in seven cities beyond our own. “Tour” may be a bit of a misnomer, as the Intergalactic crew won’t be doing the bus-and-truck routine from gig to gig; rather, they’ll be heading out for a series of one-offs spread over four months. Still, by the end of January, SVT will have introduced crackerjack reporter Molly Sloan and her galaxy-galloping gang to folks in Carbondale and Glen Ellyn, Ill.; San Luis Obispo and San Diego, Calif.; Troy, N.Y.; Great Barrington, Mass.; and Texarkana, Texas. The tour will also be something of a space odyssey for the company, as they’ll be performing in venues much larger than the 75-100 seat spaces in which The Intergalactic Nemesis and its sequels have usually been presented – say, 10 times larger. Fortunately, they’ll have three days of rehearsal in the 1,200-seat Hogg to adjust to filling all that space. Even if you’ve seen the show before, it’ll be worth seeing how well they do. And if you haven’t yet experienced the extraterrestrial exhilaration that comes from The Intergalactic Nemesis, what a great time to let it put you in orbit.
The Intergalactic Nemesis will be performed Friday, Sept. 8, 8pm, at Hogg Auditorium. For more information, call 474-SVT6 or visit www.salvagevanguard.org.
This article appears in September 1 • 2006.