"This actually didn't originate with me," says playwright Reina Hardy about Agent Andromeda: The Orion Crusade. "It originated as a devised piece. And normally people think of devised work as quite highbrow and... arty and a bit strange. Our show is definitely strange, but it's also wild and sexy and fun and hilarious."
Hardy actually came on board after being approached by director Rudy Ramirez, who himself had been approached by the aerial art group Sky Candy, who were looking to create a sci-fi sex comedy aerial show.
Rather than cloister herself away and create the play from whole cloth, Hardy gathered together with the cast. "Everybody did some writing exercises," she says. "And I got to know all the performers, and then once I had all this material...I ran away with it."
The first run of the show turned out to be a big hit (and was nominated for multiple awards), so a return engagement was inevitable. This year, Agent Andromeda: The Orion Crusade is returning to the Austin stage at Ground Floor Theater before heading out on tour.
"It's an amazing production, and re-launching it has been so much fun," says producer and performer Ginger Snaps. "And getting to kind of really get at the heart of the parts we love the most, and play around with making things a little more mobile so that we can take it on the road has been really interesting."
"With Agent Andromeda now, we're trying to kind of take the more Broadway approach to it, to where people can swing in and out of roles," Snaps says. "So we're seeing different people now in these roles and it's really cool to see the different things they're bringing to it."
Agent Andromeda: The Orion Crusade runs through March 10 at Ground Floor Theater.
