Overview
Pop Punk High is a new musical written by and for everyone who grew up singing and screaming along to blink-182, Sum 41, Green Day, Good Charlotte, Fall Out Boy, Dashboard Confessional, Taking Back Sunday, Jimmy Eat World, and so many more angsty, angsty pop punk bands of the early to mid 2000’s. Somewhere in between parody and loving tribute with a big dose of nostalgia.
Pop Punk High is a takedown of your favorite high school movies and music of yesteryear, but it’s so much more than that – it’s an exploration of the ridiculous tropes and prevailing mindsets that dominated so much of the pop punk landscape, and seeks to understand why amazing female-identifying pop punk performers like Hayley Williams and Laura Jane Grace are often downplayed or forgotten. It’s an incisive critique of the absurd depths of masculinity and “not giving a fuck” that pop punk performers tried to model, and how those attitudes informed a whole generation of listeners. And it’s also the only musical in the world featuring the singing ghost of Avril Lavigne.
CLICK HERE TO HEAR THE TRACK "MY LIFE SUCKS" performed by Ben Lapidus in Pop Punk High.
What are people saying about Pop Punk High? Here are some snippets from our reviews of our previous run at the PIT Loft:
“Musically, the show hits the parody nail directly on the head. If the lyrics weren't so damned funny, you could easily mistake these tracks for an actual Blink 182 album.”
“What Cook and his crew have created here is explosively good.”
“I left this show and immediately wanted to watch it again.”
“[The] one-liners are savage, [the] dialogue is to both kill and die for, and [the] understanding of the pop-punk milieu is doctorate grade. I haven't laughed this much at the PIT since the first time I saw Puffs there… and look where that show ended up.”
All quotes from Thomas Burns Scully writing for Popdust.
Who We Are
Felicia Lobo, Director
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Felicia Lobo is a Brooklyn based director who specializes in horror and fantastical theatre. Recent projects include High School Coven (Corkscrew Festival), Suburban Nightmare (workshop with Insomnium Theatre Company), Wunderkammer (reading with Pipeline Theatre Company), BB's Inferno (PIT Striker), and Rubiella: A Ghost Story (Pipeline Theatre Company). Outside of her theatre work, Felicia is the front woman of QWAM, a local punk band. BFA: NYU Tisch Drama. www.FeliciaLobo.com
Ben Lapidus, Writer/Audio Designer/Band Leader
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Ben Lapidus is a songwriter, performer, and sound engineer based in NYC. He stars in and wrote the music/lyrics for Pop Punk High – A Pop Punk Musical. He is the lead singer/songwriter for the the alternative band Ambler, and the skate-punk band Kill Your Friends. His company Lapidus Audio creates original music and sound for film and stage. Ben holds a BFA in Recorded Music from the The Clive Davis Institute at NYU Tisch.
Anderson Cook, Writer/Producer
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Anderson Cook is a playwright and lyricist. Anderson’s musicals co-written (book & lyrics) with Amanda D'Archangelis include The Disembodied Hand That Fisted Everyone to Death - the Musical!, produced at the PIT, the Reckless Theatre, and the Boston Conservatory, and Blatantly Blaine, which was listed as one of the "Best Things to See This Week" by Time Out NY. The Disembodied Hand… will appear at Dad’s Garage in Atlanta and Morta Hassen Theatrics in Stockholm, Sweden, next season. He and Amanda are the winners of the 2017 NMI New Voices Contest, sponsored by Walt Disney Imagineering. His plays include Curiosity Box, Dog Murder Variations, The Origen of Love, and The Roof Play. They have been seen at venues such as the Lee Strasburg Institute, Dixon Place, the San Diego Fringe, the Secret Theatre, and more.
He holds a BFA in Dramatic Writing from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, where he studied under Lucas Hnath, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Peter Parnell, Nicky Silver, and Suzan-Lori Parks. He is in his second year of pursuing an MFA in Dramatic Writing from Carnegie Mellon University under Rob Handel.
Anderson is currently working on a commissioned musical adaptation of young adult novel FAT KID RULES THE WORLD with Amanda D'Archangelis and Ben Lapidus, as well as a commissioned original play from producer Brian Spector and Keaka Productions.
Carly Oscar, General Manager
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Carly Oscar is a New York based creative with a passion for producing and performing comedy in all mediums. She's worked as a producer on thirteen short films, five indie music videos, and two theatrical productions including The Disembodied Hand That Fisted Everyone To Death - the Musical! (The PIT, Reckless Theatre) for which she was an original cast member. Over the past year she's worked for the Weinstein Company, The New Yorker, and Late Night with Seth Meyers. Outside of school, she works with HeadGum Podcast Network and is a member of the Producer's Guild of America student program. She is currently in her senior year at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts completing a BFA in Film & Television Production.
What We Need
There’s no beating around the bush – Pop Punk High is absolutely crazy. From an 18-foot expanding fake phallus, to magical skateboards, and a strong affinity for obscenity, the show never ceases to shock and delight. Written by a former pop punk local celebrity and directed by the frontwoman of Queen With a Megaphone, an active punk band in New York City, the show has deep roots in a love for pop punk culture and all that it entails.
We’ve had two previous runs with this show in theatre spaces that precluded us from presenting the show as we really wanted; with a live, loud, legit, pop punk band. We’ve found the perfect venue at the Parkside Lounge, a historic one-hundred-and-six year old bar on the Lower East Side of Manhattan that has seen thousands of bands of all stripes come through as well as four theatre pieces that have been reviewed by the New York Times. We hope to be the fifth, but in order to do so, we need your help.
We need money in order to build sets, props, pay our cast and crew and design teams, and pay for the venue. A full breakdown of our budget can be viewed below. At this point, our production team cumulatively has over ten independently-produced shows under our belt, so we are confident in our ability to effectively and efficiently use all the money raised to make the show the best it can be while still making sure everyone working on the project is compensated fairly. This show will be performing weekly for eight weeks, and this budget is the absolute barebones that we need in order to create a successful production.
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