Well, word is getting out and the rumors are starting to fly: “Mad King Thomas is breaking up.” “Mad King Thomas is over.” “Mad King Thomas has died.”
And while it’s true that Mad King Thomas died in our last show, (those of you who came to the Narrator Is Suspect kindly witnessed our elongated death scene), it’s also true that we’re still alive and kicking. (As the audience toasted at the end of the show: The King is Dead; Long Live the King!) Metaphorically we’re not going anywhere, even if physically we’re spreading out across the United States. Monica is about to go to grad school at the end of the summer (either in Boston or Boulder, CO), and Tara will be moving to L.A. in the fall. I’ll be staying in Minneapolis, moonlighting at the karaoke bars singing off-key renditions of “All By Myself” in the style of Celine Dion, which is kind of like moving.
So ultimately, it’s a time of transition. We’re not breaking up, though. We’re doing the long-distance thing, and we’re figuring out what the long-distance thing means. Maybe we’ll keep making stage performances, and we’ll just rack up the frequent flier miles. Or maybe we’ll keep making non-stage performances, and we’ll still rack up frequent flier miles. Maybe we’ll keep making phone dances, and we’ll save ourselves a shit ton of money. Or maybe we’ll focus on dance videos or writing or maybe the traveling will become the performance itself. As Monica-as-circus-ringleader shouts in the beginning of Like a Circus, Only Death, “Anything. Is. Possible!”
Death has been a reoccurring theme these days. The death scene (which, spoiler alert, occurred in the future) was both an ending and a promise. We are together until our final performance when we are 103 (or 107 if Tara has her druthers), but there is a reason we are re-enacting (future-enacting?) that death now. And there’s a reason that our final toast in The Narrator Is Suspect is becoming the title of our next piece: The King is Dead; Long Live the King.
We’re asking all these questions, talking and writing and going on a retreat to figure some of it out. We decided we should also ask those questions artistically. So we’re making a piece for the April 30th Pleasure Rebel at the Bryant Lake Bowl that incorporates our death, our phoenix-selves rising from the ashes, and lots of left over gold lamé because we also have some unanswered questions about home, and we never feel more at home than when in gold lamé. We hope you’ll join us, that you’ll cheer us on, and that you’ll offer us your hopes and dreams to be burnt together with ours and reshaped from the ashes.