It's a clement Tuesday evening at the Inner Harbor--one of the first in a long time. The brick promenade is choked with tourists doing prototypical Inner Harbor stuff: crowding around a joke-slinging unicyclist, queuing up at the National Aquarium, stuffing their maws with sundry greasy/sweet foodstuffs.
But amid this camera-toting normality--up astride the hoary planking of the U.S.S. Constellation, moored at the very epicenter of harbor activity--something decidedly off-kilter is occurring. Here the decks of the 19th-century naval vessel are being swabbed . . . with Q-tips. Here a boom box plays bouncy neo-burlesque grind-house tunes for an amateur band of hoofers trying to line dance while wearing eye patches. Here a woman sits contemplating how to get her hands on 1,000 free slices of plastic-wrapped American cheese.
Fluid Movement is at it again--Baltimore's 4-year-old performance-art troupe is rehearsing its Go-Go Pirate Show, a somewhat twisted take on Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island to be performed for five evenings on board the Constellation starting June 20. That the group is rudely juxtaposing gritty, 18th-century seafaring with glittery 20th-century pop culture is nothing new. With shows like Poe on Wheels (a roller-skating-based retelling of Edgar Allan's The Masque of the Red Death) and Hoe-Down in Hades (a square-dancing take on the Greek tale of Orpheus) under its belt, it's safe to say that goofball anachronisms are Fluid Movement's stock in trade. But with its bold setting, ambitious budget, and dialogue-heavy script, Go-Go Pirate Show does have the community-based nonprofit ensemble charting some different waters.
"This is sort of a new direction for us," says 28-year-old company founder and Go-Go director Keri Burneston. "While we have moved shows to other locations before, we've been well-rooted in Patterson Park for awhile. And we've really upped the production value with this show, which has been a challenge since we're on a ship. You can't tape anything up, you have to figure out the lights, the sound, and just how to play everything on a ship, which is like a theater in the round."
The seeds of the show go back to last fall, when some Fluid Movement folks were driving around town scouting possible show locations. The Constellation, long an Inner Harbor icon, seemed to leap out at them. "It was like, man that would be a great place for a show," Burneston recalls. After a bit of brainstorming, a pirate show seemed a natural choice for the nautical setting. But then the concept needed the group's trademark twist--some sort of wacky wrinkle.
"We just starting rhyming stuff with 'pirate show' and came up with 'Go-Go Pirate Show,' which had just the tongue-in-cheek juxtaposition we were looking for," Burneston says. "Then we hit on Treasure Island, since it's the classic pirate tale."
Getting the Constellation Museum, which oversees the circa-1850 sloop, to allow its historic vessel to be invaded by go-go dancers was actually one of the performance group's lesser challenges. The museum is under the auspices of the Living Classrooms Foundation, and Burneston had previously worked for the Fells Point-based nonprofit. "I cashed in a lot of Living Classrooms favors to make this happen," she says. "Somehow, they thought it would be a good idea."
Constellation Museum executive director Chris Rowsom calls the looming go-go show "an experiment."
"Even back in the Civil War-era Navy, it wasn't just work, work, work, and no play," Rowsom says. "It's all very harmless. It's not something we would want to necessarily do all the time, but I certainly hope the show exposes the ship to a new audience."
With a concept in hand and a setting secured, local theater director/writer Mike Smith was called on to hammer out the first Go-Go Pirate Show script, which was then fine-tuned by a host of Fluid Movement veterans. While past shows have relied largely on movement, dance, and music to tell the tale, Go-Go is very verbal. It's akin to the troupe's first "talkie." There are only six speaking roles, and half of them have been filled with experienced actors, but even so Burneston says she still finds it all "a little scary."
One challenge for the audience--the ship holds 225 people--is that they have to stand during the entire 50-minute show (though the group will make provisions for those for whom this would be a hardship). Viewers might even be asked to help move props around. But even with some audience members pitching in with free labor, Go-Go is shaping up to be Fluid Movement's most expensive show to date, with a price tag, Burneston estimates, of around $20,000.
"We are paying a fee [to use the Constellation], but it's not anything close to what they usually would charge for the amount of time we'll be using it," Burneston says. "They're cutting us a huge break."
Local musicians Snackie Hillman and Eddie Chabot have been hired to compose and perform an all-original score for the show. And insurance is another major cost. A fund-raising party--dubbed the Pleasure Island Pirate Jamboree--is scheduled for June 28. The group has also appointed a person to go after charitable donations of both props and party fare. (For reasons perhaps better left unexplained, the show requires a lot of slices of American cheese; so far, Kraft has declined to cough up some orange for the cause.)
With just a few rehearsals left, Burneston admits that the show isn't exactly, uh, ship-shape yet. But then her group has pulled-off some outrageous productions in the past. And a goof here and there can be part of the fun.
"We're hoping," Burneston says, "that the novelty of the setting will be exotic enough so that people will cut us some slack."
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