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Evil German Clowns Run Amok | Willkommen in Spreepark is part Sprockets, part KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park.

WILLKOMMEN IN SPREEPARK
Directed by Michelle Kennedy. Written by Tala Berkes and Marshall Watson. Featuring Bayonets!!!, Illfit Outfit, Field & Stream, Blind Tiger Tiger, and more. TransAlta Arts Barns (10330-84 Ave). May 22-24. Tickets available through TIX on the Square (420-1757/tixonthesquare.ca).

What does a collective of musicians do when they want to fund their art but can’t prize any cash loose from the traditional outlets? If you’re the band Spreepark, you go looking outside the box... and inside the amusement park. 

“We were looking at grants that we would be eligible for,” explains Eric Cheng, Spreepark multi-instrumentalist and one of the founders of local label Champion City Records, “and the Edmonton Explorations grant looked like a really good fit. It’s a grant for young, emerging artists and it encourages artists to look beyond what they would normally do within their discipline and make connections with different artists and different audiences in those respective arts communities.” 

Thus Willkommen in Spreepark (that’s German for “Welcome to Spreepark”) was born. With two albums’ worth of material that Spreepark recorded over a weekend last year as its foundation, Willkommen in Spreepark is a multi-disciplinary collaboration between local artists, actors, dancers, designers, and musicians. Part play, part rock concert, part resurrected amusement park, the production will almost be as colourful as the real-life story that inspired it.

Built in 1969, Cultural Park Plänterwald was Germany’s answer to Disneyland—but it was not fated for the same level of storybook success. Renamed Spreepark after the fall of the Berlin Wall, when it was taken over by investor Norbert Witte, the park filed for bankruptcy in 2001. Witte then tried to smuggle more than 180 kilos of cocaine (worth $14 million) from Peru into Germany in the masts of the park’s flying carpet ride, but was caught by German authorities.

Now, Cheng and his cohorts have set out to do nothing less than bring the disgraced Spreepark back to life. Besides live music from local acts such as Illfit Outfit and Blind Tiger Tiger, the installation also will make use of audio-visual components as it tells the story of two boys who break into Spreepark and wind up having to save the world from an evil clown. Hey, it’s no crazier than Spreepark’s actual history.

“The script is based half on the history of the amusement park in Germany, and half on the music of Spreepark the band’s last two albums,” Cheng says. “We took at the songs we wrote, which happened to be about Spreepark, and based the script around them. There was a narrative that emerged from the music, so the script came together very quickly and very organically.” 

The six bands that are involved with Willkommen in Spreepark will be playing their own versions of the songs Cheng and his bandmates wrote, and Cheng fully expects each performance to be different from the others. 

“What will work the first night won’t work the second night,” says director Michelle Kennedy. “There are bands that are really easy for the actors to work with, and there are others that are more difficult for the actors just because their music is so unorthodox. It really will be a different experience every night. Everyone is so stoked and so scared at the same time. But mostly excited.”