Tape Crusaders

As a form of peer-to-peer musical transaction, the mixtape was already sputtering toward obsolescence in 2008, with the internet and iPods making it all too easy to discover new music and mash it together in creative segues. So it was only fitting that Mad Cat Theatre Company’s own Mixtape — a collection of original one-act plays, poems, and films — seemed concentrated on nostalgia when it premiered that year. Six years later, with Pandora and Spotify hammering more nails into the mixtape’s analog coffin, it seems even more vital for somebody to preserve the storied ’90s hodgepodge of the mixtape — which, when curated by a mad genius, can travel sonic avenues that no algorithm would ever discover. Thus, we have Mad Cat’s sequel, Mixtape 2, a new amalgam of short plays (including premieres by Paul Tei, Deborah L. Sherman, and Elena Maria Garcia) and videos (directed by sound design guru Matt Corey, actor/photographer George Schiavone, and others) divided into two “sides.” Tei’s theme for Mixtape 2, subtitled Ummagumma Forza Zuma!, is “about having the right mixture of mojo needed to make it through a metamorphosis.” Sounds very Mad Cat.
Thursdays-Sundays, 8 p.m. Starts: Jan. 4. Continues through Jan. 19, 2014