Interloper afoot, Welcome to Night Vale’s live performance “A Spy In the Desert” brought the creepy happenings of a small desert town straight to the Bijou’s stage last night.
Welcome to Night Vale is a twice-monthly podcast formatted as a community radio, featuring the weather, children’s fun fact science corner, updates on traffic and strange, and sometimes life-threatening events. The script of Night Vale is written by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor and voiced by Knoxvillian Cecil Baldwin with original music by Disparition.
“If you have not heard of the podcast ‘Welcome to Night Vale,’ you’re going to have a very weird night,” Bashwiner said. “If you have heard of the podcast ‘Welcome to Night Vale,’ you’re going to have a very weird night.”
“A Spy in the Desert” is a new stand-alone story set in the Night Vale universe, that can easily be enjoyed both by the show’s newcomers and seasoned fans. The story features Cecil Baldwin as Cecil Palmer, Symphony Sanders as 16-year-old Tamika Flynn, Meg Bashwiner as Deb, the sentient patch of haze and a special guest from the audience acted as the “interloper.” The weather, a segment featuring various musical guests, was provided by non-binary, transgender singer-songwriter Mal Blum.
They set the tone of their set with their hilarious self-effacing humor, which was easily at home with the rest of the Night Vale crowd, with songs like “Archive,” a tune about anxious thought patterns they have about when people die off, or when aliens find earth. Blum also performed “Reality TV,” “Robert Frost,” a cover of the Ryan Adam’s song “Two,” and read an original passive-aggressive poem titled “Ghost Adventures by Mal Blum.”
Before the show even started, Bashwiner was already in character and added a bit of the typical Night Vale flare to the opening announcements, acting as a time traveller coming to warn the audience of things like exits, not smoking inside, cell phones and photography, and audio recordings.
“Exits, just like life, you don’t always come in the same way you go out,” Bashwiner said. “Take me for example, I came in in one of the more traditional ways, and I will probably leave in one of the less traditional ways. So please take a moment to locate your nearest exit and think about your birth.”
“Now if someone could direct me to late 1944, I can show Donald Trump’s mom how to use birth control,” Bashwiner said.
After the audience had their fair share of time travel, a man with a rich-toned voice and a story entered the stage and accompanied with musician Disparition, said “Welcome, Night Vale.”
“A Spy in the Desert” tells the story of Cecil, Tamika and citizens as they all try to flush out “the Manx,” a notorious spy who collects secrets who has come into the small desert community. The concert was interactive, encouraging the audience to get involved, with Cecil directing everyone to chant “crush him,” “violence” and whisper “what have you done” during the show’s sports segment. A member of the audience was also selected to act as “the Manx.”
Night Vale’s return to Knoxville marked the show’s fifth return to Knoxville to the stage where Baldwin first got his start in theatre.
“It’s been truly amazing to get to come back to the Bijou and perform Night Vale for all of you,” Baldwin said. “This theatre is the place where I made my stage debut and also where my mom took me and my brother to see our first piece of theatre ‘The Devil and Daniel Webster.’”
“I just wanted to thank you all for coming out, on a Monday night, to see something as weird as a podcast on stage,” Baldwin said.
At the end of the tour, the show will release the recordings online with the rest of the Night Vale episodes for those that could not attend Welcome to Night Vale’s 2018-2019 world tour.
From left to right, Disparition, Symphony Sanders and Cecil Baldwin perform for the Welcome To Night Vale show at the Bijou Theatre on October 1, 2018.
