Tomb Quest Is About Making Something With Your Friends
This One Feels Special
I’m in a new Starkid show. It’s called Tomb Quest. It opens in a little less than three weeks at The Colony Theatre here in Burbank.
If you’ve heard or seen me talk about the show online, I’ve used the words “this one’s special” several times. I’d like to tell you why I specifically feel that way in this specific season.
As much as I love the act of performing and creating, I often find the obstacles and red tape of the business of it all to be disheartening, if not downright defeating. The bureaucracy, the networking, the constant need to elevate one’s social status in order to desperately keep up with relevancy both online and in creative circles to justify your value to be able to get hired to do the thing you’ve spent your life training to do. The rat race of it all can be soul crushing. After fifteen years of pursuing creativity professionally, I’ve had the wind knocked out of me more times than I can count. I have contemplated just about every other form of work I could possibly endure to make a living. But here’s where they always come up short.
I go and make a show with my friends. I remember the why. And I remember that this is the thing I love to do and engage with more than just about anything. And I keep going.
To me, this is the DNA of Tomb Quest. Five jaded friends come back together in the basement where they fell in love with storytelling to rekindle that magic that seems so far away. After the heartbreaks, the creative blocks, the betrayals and dust of broken dreams has settled, and in the wake of their friend’s passing, they begin to explore the world they found so much joy in all those years ago.
And they find that love again. Sure, there are other things they could choose to do. But they are choosing to do this with each other. To create, simply because they can.
And I should be clear. This is a Starkid show. Which means alongside all of that heart and meaning and rediscovery of magic… there are also dick jokes.
The show is goofy, crass, delightfully unhinged, and full of the kind of whimsy that makes you simultaneously groan and laugh your butt off. Starkid has always understood that the best way to sneak something true past your defenses is to make you laugh first. The fusion of silliness and sincerity is the point.
Time and again, when I have been on the brink of quitting, the act of creating with my friends brings me back to that place of magic and discovery, where anything is possible. Not because there are jobs or money or status on the line, but simply because the purest form of human expression is to create and imagine. Getting to do that with people you love? That’s the real magic.
The last few years have been some of the most challenging of my life, testing me in ways I never imagined. Through it all, creativity, that spark of magic, has been the fire that has continued to blaze. It’s been a lifeline.
So do I think this show is special? Yes. But maybe because I needed the reminder the most.
“Whatever story we spin, you can always count me in, because I know where we’ve been. Let’s begin.”
You can see Tomb Quest LIVE starting July 30th.
For tickets, visit: https://www.teamstarkid.com