A Night at the Bronze: Once More with Feeling + Dance Party - bigger, better and queerer
27 Oct 2018.

by Drew Rowsome - Production photos by Brian Edwards

"All of the stuff we want to do, we want to have queer origins or at least a queer spin," says Kyah Green of Cardboard Sword Collective's A Night at the Bronze: Once More with Feeling. "For me, Buffy was a very queer coming of age experience. Not just the metaphor of Buffy as the slayer and someone who has to keep a secret who then finds the power in embracing what she actually is, but also because Willow and Tara were really formative for me when I was a kid. Buffy's always been inherently queer for me and both Stephanie Malek and I really put a lot of emphasis on making sure that a queer voice is there in everything we do. Or at least that's the plan."

Buffy the Vampire Slayer's musical episode Once More with Feeling was a ratings and critical hit when it first aired in 2001, and its acclaim and cult status has only grown. "Once More with Feeling is kind of what started Cardboard Sword Collective on our weird little journey," says Green. "Around this time last year, I was at a trivia night and I was talking to a friend saying, 'I would have done better if it had of been Buffy trivia, cause it's the one thing I know off by heart.' She said, 'Oh, you like Buffy? You should talk to my friend here.' And that's how Steph and I started talking."

They haven't stopped talking, not only partnering to found Cardboard Sword Collective but also personally. "That same night Steph said, 'I've been asked so many times to produce a version of Once More with Feeling. No-one's ever done it, should we do it?' So within two hours we had a plan and a cast and a booking. We threw it all together in three weeks. It was certainly one of those right time, right place sort of situations. Now a year later, we're doing it again. Bigger and better with more production now that we know what we're doing, a bigger venue and a bigger party afterwards."

Bigger and better but Green is proud to say that, "The majority of the cast is returning. There are two re-casts but that was strictly based on two actors who had to drop out. They all have crazy busy schedules because they're so god-damned talented. We're bringing in Mark Andrada [Cannibal The Musical] as Giles and Nkasi Ogbonnah as Dawn. Mark is a mainstay of the comedy community so we're very excited to get to work with him. Both Steph and I primarily work in the comedy community, that's where we began, so that's where our networking is. But we also draw from the musical theatre world, our Buffy, Jenna Warriner, is primarily a musical theatre performer but she does comedy and she's wonderful at it. She's part of another group, Songbusters, that Steph and I both do. She's more trained than most of us."

But as the original Once More with Feeling episode showed, sometimes untrained voices can be more emotive and thematically apt. "We've tried to replicate that because I think it would be wrong to have a Xander who could really sing that song well," says Green. "He has to sing like Xander. He has to be doing his best with it because that's what that character would do. The musical aspect of it is more because a musical can pull those feelings out of people. They were at a point in that season where they had to get a lot of plot done really fast and a musical worked out really well for that. How do you expose this major secret of Buffy was actually doing really great and you ruined it? That's huge. Arguably one of the biggest revelations of the show. So it makes sense to do it in such an emotional, massive theatrical format like a musical."

But the demands of a musical did factor into Green's casting. "As we were talking about it that first night, when we had literally just met, right out of the gate Steph was like, 'I want to play Anya. I love Anya, I can sing all of her parts.' Steph is a wonderful singer, far superior than me in that regard. I couldn't decide who I wanted to play. As a gender queer person, I have a complicated relationship with casting sometimes. And in this case my favourite characters were not the ones I would normally play. I mean I would never play Willow. Giles is one of my favourite characters but I can't sing any of his parts. It was Steph who suggested, 'You should play Spike. Spike has that kind of a fun, confident swagger to him but I think you could fit that part really well.' I thought about it for a couple of days. It took Steph convincing me that "If that's what you want to play, that's what you'll be best at, so do it.' I thought he was way too cool for me to play."

It doesn't hurt that the Spike character has the showstopping number "Rest in Peace." "I've always liked the rock n roll/punk aesthetic," says Green. "It's one my favourite musical genres so that's something that I was always drawn to.  Getting to embody that, even though it felt like a stretch from my regular personality, is really fun. Especially the swaggery way Spike does it. I think everyone likes that kind of music because it's so confident. That's such a fun element of playing Spike but that song is so insecure at the same time which is kind of fun."

 And of course Spike, as embodied by James Marsters, was Buffy's resident sex symbol. "Yeah, that's fun too," laughs Green. "It's definitely not a downside to the role. It's very fun to play the bad boy. At the time we were starting to do it, I was trying to figure out where I was falling on the gender scale, how I felt attractive. I realized I felt more confident dressed in a more masculine way, presenting more masculine. Spike was my first adventure into, 'This is me playing a guy and feeling incredibly confident doing it.' It was a fun, queer adventure for me to get to play this confident character who helped me be more confident in my masculinity."

There will be lots of swaggering at the post-performance dance party. "It's Halloween so costumes are certainly encouraged," says Green. "I would personally like to encourage costumes on a regular basis. The DJ, this is possibly my favourite part of the whole night which is saying something because it's pretty much fun from top to bottom, is Mark Andrada who DJs all the Comedy Bar parties on a regular basis. He's a very, very good DJ, very wicked. He will be sticking around, in costume as Giles, and DJing the dance party."

Or maybe it isn't the best part. As Cardboard Sword Collective's mandate states they make, "nerdy theatre and create spaces for queer and female content." And the performance is billed as a sing along, a format beloved by nerds, queers, comedians and musical theatre performers. One can almost hear Green/Spike swaggering insecurely at the prospect, "It's going to be fun because the fan energy is so high. Except that I have to sing over the audience because everyone's so damn excited. But that's the way we like it."

More Buffy, Spike and Kayeh Green at drewrowsome.blogspot.com