We went over to the Noodle Factory in Oakland on Sunday to get a taste of “The Burning Opera – How to Survive the Apocalypse.” It was one of the final tuneups for the show that opens Monday, October 5, at Teatro ZinZanni, on the waterfront in San Francisco.

The rock opera is a little bit “Hair” in that it tries to capture the zeitgeist of a movement, and a little bit “Rent” in the joyful exuberance that sometimes comes along with incredible hardship, and maybe a little bit “Jesus Christ, Superstar” in the way it touches your spiritual buttons.

The storyline is about a guy and his girl who make their way to the playa for the first time.  She’s a lot more reluctant about everything than he is, at least initially. She tolerates the greeters, gets freaked out trying to set up their tent in a dust storm, and in general is having a really crappy time. She finds very little amusing about shirtcocking, but of course she’s not alone in that assessment. But she’s uptight and really unsure about this whole radical self-expression thing in general, especially when it comes to nudity and sexuality.

But things happen.  There are transformations. Hilarity ensues. And you’ll want to see it all for yourself.

You definitely don’t need to have gone to the desert to get a kick out of the Burning Opera, but there is lots that will be familiar to people of the playa: PortaPotties, blinkies and pasties, plus the eternal question: How can people who wear pink fur get along with the folks in black leather and studs?

Here’s more from the website:

Driven by the desire to bring the Burn off the playa, but without the crusty snot, “How to Survive the Apocalypse” aims to communicate the culture of Burning Man to wider audiences. On a larger level, the show aims to explore the inherent conflicts and painful paradoxes of the event itself, from its tangled origins to its ongoing mutation.

The tale unfolds with the help of some really beautiful music and some incredibly talented people.

You can find out about tickets over here. The workshop performances in January sold out, so you might want to grab some tickets before it’s too late for this go-round.

Lots and lots more photos after the jump.

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Experience different function attitudes

I was surprised how many of the things I actually naturally just do. I naturally just do the Introverted Sensation things.
Extroverted feeling is also right on. I am fascinated with the psychological “roles” people give each other and that they agree to play out. I also really relate to many Seinfeld episodes, given that interactions and gestures and even shoes all have different meanings. I am always thinking…”what did that mean”?

Extroversion=Shallowness

please see next video for explanation of post

ok never mind- i decided to not do that and i wanted to just say that I think that it’s just awful the way that a lot of introverts bash extroverts. I just think one isn’t better than the other and we all can learn from one another.
I’m not big on the “look at me..I’m introverted and sooo smart and unique and special”. This kind of shit really irritates me and it happens 80% of the time on social networking sites. I really hate the “I’m so different” crap. And no I’m not being very sensitive to this because I don’t think anyone should encourage or foster a mentality that tries to elevate itself by bashing others. Also I am convinced that most INFJ groups are actually dominated by INFP’s who like to sit around hold hands and cry about it. I think this is weak, I have no tolerance for those that don’t help themselves and just want to whine about their crippling emotional problems. Get a therapist for Christ’s sake or get over it!

On a site recently I LOL when someone posted that they have a social anxiety disorder and are introverted so sometimes they can’t seem to go to a coffee shop to get a cup of coffee. Someone replied…that’s not introversion or an anxiety disorder, that’s laziness. Get off your ass and live your fucking life, stop coming up all with all these excuses why you can’t function.
Ridiculous.
Most of the other people replied that they understood or they empathized with her and ohhhhh group hug…..
YUCK
That’s not me…is nothing like the way I am.
I am not so loathsome to accommodate weak minded martyrs.
It just really irritates me.
i am not returning to this site again. I don’t feel like I can relate to any of these supposed “INFJ’s” Maybe I should go hang out with some NT’s for awhile. At least they won’t start crying and whining about their office mate who glares at them and makes them feel uncomfortable.
Glare back for fuck’s sake. Take the wheel, it’s your life.
Victim mentality annoys the shit out of me!

Hi. I’m Summer. I live in the Holy Cross now, in New Orleans. The Holy Cross is the sliver-by-the-river area of the Lower 9th Ward which didn’t get crushed by a tsunami shortly after Hurricane Katrina hit landfall. All around my neighborhood, during the day, you can hear hammering and sawing and the shouts of construction workers complaining about heat and sun. It sounds like a Deadwood background reel, or Black Rock City being built.

my house is on the upper right hand corner … of the riverbend. So awesome

Meanwhile, I’m living with no refrigerator for the moment. Also, zero grocery stores exist within biking distance — reasonable biking distance — so for the past I-don’t-know-how-many days in a row, when I’m not being fed at the fancy-pants restaurant at which I toil, I partake of the HOLY CROSS BREAKFAST: Fried chicken and a pickle.

Yes. My housemate and I have even made up a New Orleans bounce song based on the trials and tribulations of living refrigerator-less in an area lacking so much as a Piggly Wiggly or a produce stand. No hope of any sun-grown vegetable haunts our nightly dreams of dinner — only pickled things and clucky clucky. The de-toxifying, delectably ingestible plant life of my Bay Area raw food eatin’ diet is gone. Now, my idea of “eating” has more to do with giant corporations fleecing people who live and die poor into thinking “red” is a flavor and “cherry” is a type of lip gloss.

This is where lowernine.org comes in again. Hardcore gardener Brennan Dougherty and her merry band of volunteers branched out the helping-handiness of Rick Prose’s original idea of rescuscitating the Lower Ninth Ward and expanded it: Where water-logged houses threaten to fall, lowernine.org fixes them back up. Where Katrina’s tsunami-waters washed away homes and left empty lots full of rich Mississippi silt, sustainable neighborhood gardening can flourish. (Read Dougherty’s blog here.)

well, there’s another food source nearby, if you like three-eyed oil-rig sushi

Dougherty began the Community Garden Project with little more than gumption and scrounged materials from the gutted houses in the area. The endgame isn’t only to start a sustainable, earth-friendly business in the Lower Ninth Ward — it’s also to walk the folks of the neighborhood through the process of growing their own food. Teach a man to fish, and all that.

The call has been sounded to the Burning Ham community: New Orleans is still Fd, and we haven’t been practicing building a city out of nothing for the past couple decades for no reason. Plus, you’re unemployed, and besides, what do you want with a real paying job anyway? … So if yall desert dogs are still feeling my original post, and plan on coming out here after cleanup or (ahem) “harvest” … and you don’t feel like sucking in sawdust and sheetrock all day … come dig your fingers in the dirt with Brennan at the Community Garden Project’s Villere Street Farm.

this yard used to be a house, but a garden is almost as good for the hood. Or better

$100 a week gets you room and board in the lowernine.org bunkhouse, or you can pull your trailer up to my yard and wake up with the chickens.

Literally. We have chickens next door. They run all over the street and drive the fenced-up dogs crazy. Live chickies which we are hesitant to fry, when there’s delicious Holy Cross Breakfast at the Discount Zone gas station down the street. Fridge to come, as well as Villere St. Garden’s harvest, and gods willing, we’ll eat (mostly) sustainably again after that.

At any rate, come on down. We’re waiting for you. P.S. bring a bushel of kale and some fresh fruit

xoxo
summer