Speeding Motorcycle

A scene from the Infernal Bridegroom production "Speeding Motorcycle," featuring songs by Daniel Johnston. Photo by George Hixson.

A relatively obsucre theater group in Houston is currently performing a musical entirely based around the music of Daniel Johnston. Apropos of this, the new background music is Johnston's classic Speeding Motorcycle.

From the New York Times:

Infernal Bridegroom Has a Hit With 'Speeding Motorcycle'
By Kate Murphy
June 14, 2006

HOUSTON, June 13 — The punk-rock club where Infernal Bridegroom Productions stages its shows is in a rough neighborhood, far from this city's velvet-curtained theater district. So it is not surprising that the troupe's latest offering, "Speeding Motorcycle," is equally far from some of the traditional fare offered at the city's more conventional sites.

An original rock opera, "Speeding Motorcycle" consists entirely of songs by Daniel Johnston, a musician and artist whose childlike and hallucinatory work chronicles his mental illness.

"We have stranger tastes than the norm," said Anthony Barilla, Infernal Bridegroom's artistic director. The company's founder, Jason Nodler, wrote and directed "Speeding Motorcycle," which features several actors playing the role of Joe Boxer, a man who has lost his mind after being rejected by the woman he loves. Flat-top, plasticine headgear gives the impression that the crowns of their heads have been chopped off, leaving a black, felt-lined nothingness inside. Captain America and Casper the Friendly Ghost make cameo appearances. The score, meanwhile, ricochets from toe-tapping, feel-good songs to discordant, despairing dirges, a reflection of Mr. Johnston's bipolar disorder.

This unusual production has won over critics. Everett Evans wrote in The Houston Chronicle last week that " 'Speeding Motorcycle' should be the cult hit of Houston's summer."

Many in the audience have been first-time theatergoers, lured by Mr. Johnston's music. "He's the most important songwriter you've never heard of," Mr. Nodler said.

Mr. Johnston, 45, who lives with his parents in Waller, Tex., about an hour northwest of Houston, has a cultlike following, with a fan Web site (rejectedunknown.com) full of gushing posts by admirers from as far away as Japan. His crude home recordings are considered underground classics, and his pen and Magic Marker drawings were featured in the 2006 Whitney Biennial. A documentary about him won awards at the Sundance Film Festival and the San Francisco Independent Film Festival.

At a recent performance of "Speeding Motorcycle," scores were turned away at the door. Many moped around outside, hoping someone might leave at intermission.

In a telephone interview Mr. Johnston described it as "very cool" and said he had seen the show three times.

Infernal Bridegroom (the name comes from a line in an Arthur Rimbaud poem) was founded in 1993 to develop new audiences by producing hard-edged and challenging plays. But Mr. Nodler, who returned to the company after a peripatetic three-year hiatus to work on "Speeding Motorcycle," said, "More than anything, we do plays that we desperately want to do."

© 2006 The New York Times Company