This 'Optical Popsicle' is a museum-quality show
by David Lindquist for The Indianapolis Star
Before the members of Know No Stranger take their "Optical Popsicle" show to a big, shiny stage at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the performance artists are assembling their anything-goes spectacle in a church basement east of Fountain Square.
The "clubhouse," as it's known, is ramshackle but organized. There's a shelf for fabric rescued from thrift-store dumpsters, a stash of random electronics, a paint closet and an accumulation of props where you'll find Mongo: a 6-foot-tall puppet who eats humans.
But something else is dominating the clubhouse during preparations for the Oct. 11 event billed as "Optical Popsicle 7."
A metal "music machine," built by Know No Stranger player Alan Goffinski, is about 12 feet long and 10 feet tall. It makes a percussive racket thanks to drums and keyboards hooked together by bicycle chains.
One person can crank the machine to life, and its sound will accompany a performance by Indianapolis-based rapper Scoot Dubbs at "OP7."
"We've done some crazy contraptions, but not to this extent," said Goffinski, 28.
"Visual variety show" is one way to describe "Optical Popsicle." At last year's event, the cast provided a more colorful explanation in song: "O is for optical, 'cause you see things with your eyes. And P is for popsicle, a treat to blow your mind."
Exercising dinosaurs were part of the show. The first "OP" featured a man wearing overalls and answering questions at a booth titled "Hikipedia." This year's edition includes puppets modeled after cast members.
Know No Stranger entertains audiences throughout the year, including recent performances at PBS Kids in the Park and the Oxford Kinetics Festival in Ohio. But "Optical Popsicle" is the group's flagship event.
"This is what we look forward to all year," Know No Stranger cast member Ryan Felton said. "It's the most 'our' voice of any of the productions that we put on."
The current troupe includes founding members Michael Runge, Brandon Schaaf and Emily Gable. With roots in the Herron School of Art and Design, Know No Stranger formed in 2009.
Past sites for "Optical Popsicle" include the Athenaeum, Madame Walker Theatre Center and the bygone Earth House Collective.
Know No Stranger's connection to the IMA arrives with Scott Stulen, hired this year as the museum's first-ever curator of audience experiences and performance.
Stulen first encountered the arts collective when he traveled from Minneapolis to Indianapolis to speak at the 2012 edition of TEDx Indianapolis. He's such a big fan of Know No Stranger that the group is a newly designated artist-in-residence at the IMA.
"I think their work is really playful, very inventive," Stulen told The Indianapolis Star this summer. "I love how they take analog technology and repurpose it. They do a lot with nothing."
Goffinski said he appreciates the assistance — personnel, resources and funding — from the museum.
"They're on board, and they get it," Goffinski said. "They get what we're trying to do. It's a totally different relationship than when you are just the tenant for a weekend at a venue. They don't furrow their brows when we say something completely weird that we want to try to do."
Still, all of this won't make Wallace Wimbley feel any better as showtime approaches. Wimbley isn't a flesh-and-blood Know No Stranger player but a furry puppet who's white-haired, nebbish and about 80 years old.
"They asked me to be the stage manager for last year's show," Wimbley said during an impromptu chat. "Against my better judgment, I came back. Now, they always manage to pull it off, but this thing does a number on my gutty works."
The man behind Wimbley is Know No Stranger's Felton, a 27-year-old who grew up in Trafalgar, Ind.
Felton refers to Wimbley as a "little louder, little more pessimistic" alter ego.
"I think it's from somewhere not very deep inside myself," Felton said. "I think he's always been there, just bubbling below the surface. We have a lot in common."
Wimbley aside, Know No Stranger encourages people to check out "Optical Popsicle" as an evening that offers absurdity, introspection and awe.
Admission is $20 at the door, but discounts listed at KnowNoStranger.com set a feel-good tone for attendees. Options include $2 off for anyone who brings a watermelon sculpture. Dress like a member of a marching band for a $3 discount, and it's $4 off if you agree to a "very, very bad haircut" on site.
Felton said "Optical Popsicle" has a dependable track record.
"Any show that can get my dad to stand up and sing R. Kelly's 'I Believe I Can Fly' is a unique performance," he said.
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Know No Boundaries
Article by Seth Johnson for Sky Blue Window
Back in 2009, a restless collective of Indianapolis artists by the name of Know No Stranger decided to concoct a visual variety show to be called Optical Popsicle, relying on their imaginations to make the most of the art supplies and overhead projectors they had at their disposal.
"The atmosphere in 2009 was that where you would complain about Indianapolis and say that there was nothing going on, so we wanted to use the energy that we had to make something go on," says Michael Runge. "Rather than go somewhere else where something was already happening, we wanted to bring it here."
As it now prepares for the production's latest installment, the group still holds to its initial spirit of inventive resourcefulness, again calling upon several special guests to help it successfully curate another all-encompassing art extravaganza. Some of the guests at Optical Popsicle 7 will include the Nashville-based harpist/songwriter Timbre, Chicago-based puppeteer Davey-K and Indy's own Fahodi Dance Troupe. Throughout its history organizers held the event at diverse spots including the now-defunct Earth House, the Athenaeum Ball and Concert Hall, and the Madame Walker Theatre. This year Indianapolis Museum of Art's Toby Theatre welcomes the festivities, marking another milestone for the team of creators.
A great deal of planning goes into Optical Popsicle each year, as the group begins scripting its own original skits and brainstorming fitting guest artists months in advance, taking a curatorial approach to the variety show's orchestration. Throughout this process, Know No Stranger is particularly mindful of its prospective audience, in hopes of encouraging maximum engagement.
"There's a very specific tone and inclusive nature to Optical Popsicle, and pretty much all that we do, so when we bandy about these ideas for who could come and contribute to the show, we always want to keep that right at the forefront," explains Ryan Felton.
From Know No Stranger's inception, teamwork has been imperative to the group's output, with all members bringing their own set of artistic strengths to the table for every new production. According to Alan Goffinski, this "creative collaboration" is really what lies at the "core" of the collective.
"We can't exist without it," he says. "We've kind of got the mantra that we can pretty much do anything with the right attitude, so if we don't know how to do something, then we reach out to someone else who does."
Goffinski adds that each member of the group is good at something specific, but they're all so excited about everything they do, that they're all willing to learn about anything necessary to help each other out.
The city has been quite receptive to this sentiment, embracing Know No Stranger and what the group represents. Through making connections with like-minded individuals and organizations around Indy, the collective has been granted several unanticipated opportunities. Runge explains, "Throughout the years, since number one, we just keep meeting people who are excited about Indianapolis and excited about doing things, and we just get invited to places we don't expect." This, paired with their perpetual passion for expression, has helped them get to where they are today.
"We wouldn't have been able to go to all these places that we've been if it wasn't for people believing in what we do and helping us to do what we do," Runge says. "I think those two things together -- our excitement and our support -- are really all we have."
At Optical Popsicle 7, the group will once again encourage audience members to embrace creative freedom, just as it always has. Matt Helfrich explains, "I think part of our goal is to spark and incite creativity -- the idea that maybe we're planting seeds of creativity and inspiring creativity in people. Enabling them to think, 'I can do anything.'"
So with this in mind, the group will take the Toby stage this Saturday, letting their resourceful artistry and exuberant spirit embolden onlookers to know no bounds and invent to their heart's content.
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12 Indie Arts Groups Transforming the City’s Scene
by Marc D. Allan for Indianapolis Monthly
The basement of Victory Memorial United Methodist Church outside Fountain Square looks like the greatest kids’ playroom ever. In the glorious mess of a main room, which contains stockpiles of oddities like overhead projectors and foam swimming noodles, there’s a corner for painting, a green-screen area for film projects, and a section with assorted power tools where the construction of a giant “steampunk music machine” made of old bike parts is about to begin. In the storeroom, you’ll find shelves filled with costumes—pigeon heads and dinosaurs, among many. And in an adjacent room, what sounds like a vacuum cleaner is, in fact, just that. Except it’s being used in reverse, to inflate a giant clear plastic ball that someone can get inside to be rolled around.
This clubhouse is home to Know No Stranger, a self-described “art gang” that produces and participates in theatrical and other events around the city. This group of friends, tired of hearing people complain about the culture in Indianapolis, started the avant-garde troupe in spring 2009. “In the circles we were running in,” says Alan Goffinski, one of the founders, “there was a lot of negative energy, a lot of talk about the place that we call home. We got to the point where if everybody who was complaining about what an awful place Indianapolis was just did something positive, we would have a great city.”
Look at the arts culture in Indianapolis over the past several years and it seems that a lot of people are thinking the same way—the city’s young culturati has flourished in the last decade. For a number of years, the city had no Shakespeare companies. Now there are five. Want dance? Movies in weird places? A fashion collective? A cutting-edge fashion/film/food event? An eco-conscious music festival? In the last few years, we’ve added all that and more.
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