'Intergalactic Nemesis' bound for tour

AUSTIN (KXAN) - A germ of an idea is blooming big time. A decade ago, the young artistic director of Salvage Vanguard Theatre staged a radio play called, The Intergalactic Nemesis . The project actually began in the mid-90s with recording sessions at a local coffee house. Live audiences would pack the place every week as new episodes were recorded. There was even a national tour.

Now, Neulander and his troupe are about to head out on the road again, this time with a much more ambitious production of the show, complete with enormous comic book images of the story plastered across a giant, two-story screen.

"We're going to some amazing venues," said Neulander. The Wortham Center in Houston, Bass Hall in Fort Worth, the Lied Center in Lawrence, Kansas, the Edison in St. Louis. Our furthest north point is Duluth and then we just come right back down. I think we're going to get in a van and go!"

Plans for the tour were hatched at something called, a "booking conference." The people who book entertainment in major theatres all over the mid-west gathered to hear the pitches of various troupes and entertainers. Neulander attended in hopes of getting a handful of gigs.

"By the end of the conference," he said, "I ended up with 43 venues interested in booking the show. It was more than I could actually handle."

Since then, 17 have confirmed and Neulander expects another six or seven to sign contracts.

He's sure the tour will succeed, based on his experience in Austin. The latest version of The Intergalactic Nemesis premiered over the Labor Day weekend at the Long Center for the Performing Arts . It features an original score, three live actors reading the parts of dozens of characters, a sound effects man who can create, from common objects found around the house, unbelievably accurate sounds of everything from trains to thunder, as well as enormous images from the comic book version of the story that are displayed on a two-story screen.

"We did so much better at the premiere than any of us thought we would do," Neulander said. "Two weeks in advance of opening the show, we had sold about 250 tickets for each of the nights. This is a 2,400 seat venue and it was going to be a complete disaster. I'm not entirely sure what happened but over the next couple of weeks, word just spread like wildfire and we ended up with 2,100 people at the opening of the show.

"It was awesome and I have to say, being on the stage -- I did a little curtain speech before the show -- and seeing that ocean of people out there and hearing them respond to the show as it was happening -- I was like a kid in a candy store."

Now, the show is heading back to the Long Center for one night only, Saturday, Jan. 8, and tickets are selling briskly. So what's the appeal?

"I personally think that we are genetically wired for certain kinds of story telling," Neulander said. "I really think that human beings, through history, going all the way back to the first recorded stories, you know, the Iliad and the Odyssey, Beowulf, these stories are adventure stories and we need that kind of story telling. We need heroes."

It is a need so powerful, said Neulander, that it transcends generations.

"I mean, yes, there's that sort of hipster, comic-book-reading, sort of fan-boy audience, for sure," he said. "But then, there's also the folks who like you, read comic books when they were kids, or a little bit older who listened to radio plays when they were kids, you know. And this brings back that it very much and intentionally harkens back to that older style of story telling where there is good and there is evil and good has to defeat evil or we are all doomed!"

So what's next?

"My dream for this particular project would be to see it as a big budget, live-action picture on the big screen," said Neulander. "I mean, that would be a total dream come true for me."