Even if you missed the limited run of Karen O's "Stop the Virgens" back in the fall, a new documentary will give you a look into the making of the show.
O's "psycho opera," as she called it, "Stop the Virgens," debuted in October at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn as a part of a Creators Project festival. Described only as "an assault on the tragic joys of youth, fever dreams drenched in visual seduction, a cathartic spell spun through a cycle of nine songs," "Stop the Virgens" featured a chorus of about 40 "virgens" and two sentinels, with O as a narrator of sorts.
"It just completely changed me as an artist," O says in the film, calling the making of the show "the first time that I'd made something that was so euphoric and so free of suffering or frustration or pain."
The half-hour long documentary, from the Creators Project, shows you O and her collaborators -- including Pulitzer Prize winning writer and director Adam Rapp, O's long time costume designer Christian Joy, designer K. K. Barrett, fellow Yeah Yeah Yeahs member and co-music director Nick Zinner and others -- as they work to bring O's music to life on the stage. With footage spanning several months, from early rehearsals in the summer of 2011 up to opening night in October, the film highlights the free-ranging artistic collaboration that helped create "Stop the Virgens."
Perhaps most exciting to O fans, the film contains snippets of music from the show, including full renditions of "The Last Lullabye" and "Get Em On The Run" (first in rehearsal, then again fully staged). The film also reveals that "Stop the Virgens" is in some ways, an adaptation of O's first solo effort from 2005, a secret collection of songs that was never released.
"It's an autobiographical, emotional journey for her," director Rapp says, describing the show. "Very raw -- she's putting it all out there."
Watch Parts 1 and 2 of the documentary below: