Lawrence.com

Boom! is a five-person band. They march. They sing. They wear weird costumes. Their shtick is that they're sibling orphans-Lily, Neil, Boris, Peter and Paul-separated at birth and reunited after growing up all around the world. The instruments are ukulele, clarinet, bass drum, trombone, melodica, saxophone and accordion. They were assembled by Stephanie Roberts, who teaches physical theater at UMKC. They're from Kansas City, Mo.

How did Boom! come about?

Roberts: It's not a completely original idea. For a long time I was exposed to this Brazilian ensemble theater called Lume. They did a show where they were a marching band and they were in character and they interacted with the audience. I loved the look of them and the ferocity of their characters.

What do you mean you were exposed to this group, Lume?

Roberts: I got my MFA at Dell'Arte International School of Physical Theatre in Northern California. I learned about them and I watched a video of this show where they were a marching band.

Last December I went back to Dell'Arte to visit friends in the school, and the current MFA students had created a marching band called Glasnost. They were Eastern Europeans and they were really crazy characters. They were a little more clown-like. A lot of stuffed costumes. Pretty wild.

It reminded me again of this idea that I'd had before, so when I came back I started telling colleagues-I teach at UMKC in the graduate theater department-that I wanted to start this marching band. People told me of people who might be interested, and my friend hooked me up with Paul Rudy, who is composition professor at the UMKC Conservatory of Music. He posted my notice on the composer guild email list. That's where I found Peter and another band member, Daniel Eichenbaum.

There were a lot of people interested at first. At one point I think I had about 12 people interested in joining the band and all kinds of instruments. I was real excited I'd have all these people. When it comes down to schedules, jobs and stuff, we ended up with five, which is still difficult to get together.

Lawless: We ended up with two composers from the conservatory, Stephanie and two undergrad actors from UMKC.

Roberts: These were two undergrad students I'd directed before. We were in a conference together and were talking about this band I'd started. They said, "We want to be in it." Grant said, "I play the trombone," and Ryan said, "I want to be in it but I don't play anything." So what do we give him? The most important part of the marching band: the bass drum.

Lawless: Which was crucial to our development. I got it on eBay and wrote "boom" on it. Made us into a real marching band.

Roberts: The premise of the band is that we're reunited sibling orphans from around the world.

Lawless: Basically, we have the same parents who were traveling around the world and lost us one by one in different countries, and we've come together to form a marching band. The idea of being a family lost around the world was Stephanie's idea. The specifics of it slowly fell into place, as to where each character's from, how they got there.

Roberts: I wanted to have a lot of different styles of music. At first, I wanted it to be a gypsy band. There's different gypsy music from around the world. Then it kind of involved into what it was. I thought we could have different kinds of world music by making us all different nationalities, but I still wanted it to be a family in some way.

How long did it take to get the band ready?

Lawless: We got together in January and had our first show in May. For the first couple of months we didn't have a clear idea of what we were going to do. We were originally going to be more of a marching band that marched around people and played songs.

Roberts: That would perform outdoors, like at Buskerfest or First Fridays.

Lawless: Our first show was like a theater thing presented to the audience. Now it's more a concert show than marching around. It's about a half-hour performance.

Run me through a show.

Roberts: We start out marching in what we call "mysterious marches and geometrical formations." We march in and do silly dances. Then we have our anthem, which is our adaptation of "We Are Family," by Sister Sledge, where we introduce the band members. Then we explain to the audience we're not just about marching, that behind every marching band there's a sad story, and this is ours. We sing our "parents' lament," setting up the story that we're all lost and all have the same parents. From there, each song describes how each of us is lost and where we're from. The style of song sometimes reflects the country or background of that character. Not always.

What's playing in a bar like with a band like this?

Lawless: It's harder because it's so much smaller. When you have a theater stage, you have a whole big stage to do marches. We can spread out and do formations. But on little bar stages, it becomes part of the comedy, the fact that we barely can squeeze around each other enough to do a formation.

Roberts: There's chords and mic stands and amps all over the place that we have to march around.

Lawless: I march barefoot. I've gotten splinters.

Roberts: Our last show was at The Brick. Most of our shows, there's been a good number of our friends in the audience. A lot of theater people. So they get it. They get that it's ironic and it's just this weird theater thing. But going to a bar, and somebody's going to see maybe the set after us, a punk band or something, and they're there early and they see us-it's kind of like, "What the hell?" For the first time on Sunday, completely through the first song and maybe halfway through the second, I felt that kind of energy from the audience, like, "What in the hell is this?"

Lawless: The person that opened up for us did ambient guitar music. It was just him and his guitar.

Roberts: No breaks, just straight for-

Lawless: Twenty-five minutes or something. It was real drony stuff, and then we all of a sudden come out and march through the crowd up onto the stage.

Roberts: "He has no shirt on and a sarong and tattoos on his face and I'm in polyester '70s zip-up hot pants and boots. Peter and Paul are identical Canadian twins and they look ridiculous. Boris is in a trenchcoat and glasses. When we start doing our intros and our instrumentals, then people start clapping and laughing, and then we have 'em.

Have either of you done something like this before?

Lawless: I've never done anything quite like this. I've played in groups that play weird music or dress in funny costumes, but I've never done anything that's like a show.

Roberts: I have been in a variety show that had a band and that band was all characters. I actually played a similar character. She wasn't German, she was French, but kind of the same persona. I've been in physical theater. Vaudeville, clowning, is my recent background of work.

Soon we're losing someone. So we're losing a band member, a "family member" and a song.

Will the band continue on?

Roberts: I think so. It might be on hiatus for a while because school's starting and we'll have to find at least one other band member.

What do your UMKC colleagues think of your band?

Roberts: I am the clown teacher at school. (Laughs.) I'm the physical theater teacher, so I teach mask and clown and comedian cellaret, so I am a little bit, I guess you could say, the weird aunt. But my colleagues are huge fans. They're very supportive. My boss keeps offering to be a band member with his glockenspiel.