Theater Preview: Electronic music project Nolens Volens presents a release party in the form of a play.

In Magazine by Kelly Ashkettle

As the drummer for the successful indie rock band Uzi and Ari, Andrew Glassett has toured the world.

"I've been to so many shows," he says, sipping a cup of chocolate mint tea at the Beehive Tea Room. "Being a touring musician, I've been to hundreds and hundreds of shows. And there are very few bands that I can just watch and be impressed by their musicianship. So I like it when bands have more of a theatrical flair. Unless you're a really accomplished musician, I think performers need something else to capture an audience."

For his solo electronic project, Nolens Volens, that "something else" has taken different forms. When he released his last album, "Misanthropy/Altruism" in 2007, he gave a performance in which he presented himself as if he were in an office space. The overhead lights reacted to the volume of the music as he typed messages on a computer and made photocopies to throw into the audience.

"I only perform once or twice a year, just because every time I perform, I really make a production of it," Glassett says.

The next Nolens Volens album, which is self-titled, will have its release party on Thursday, June 25 at Kilby Court. This time, Glassett plans to take the theatricality a step further: He's written a play.

The performance will include three actors, who include Collin Smith, a friend of Glassett's who studied acting at BYU. Glassett found the other two actors, Danielle Koons and Nikki Smith, by placing an ad on craigslist.

"It was really hard for me to find actors to be involved, just because the project is extremely low budget," he explains. "There's just not a lot of compensation, and so I had to find people that were more interested in the music and willing to put in the time."

This is the first time Glassett has tried to write a theatrical production, but he says he's gotten help from a friend, Jonathan Higley, who's been acting as the play's producer.

The album has nine tracks, which each represent a member of Glassett's immediate family. All nine tracks will be performed at the release party, except "Mezzokind," the one he wrote about how he felt as the middle child.

"It kind of seemed strange to me, if I'm presenting my family, to also be presenting myself," he comments, adding that a few of the other tracks will be abbreviated to match the action of the play.

There are some lines during the half hour performance, he says, but there will be a lot of pantomiming because of the volume of the music.

One of the longest monologues will be read by Nikki Smith before the song "Wunderkind," which Glassett wrote about his younger sister, Margot, a young mother and a musician currently working on her doctorate at the University of Utah.

"The monologue deals with those issues of being unfulfilled and dealing with that in her own way," Glassett explains.

Danielle Koons will play a doctor. With the help of a sheet and a doll, she'll portray the act of delivering babies; and during one song, she'll use a red cloth to signify a cancer diagnosis.

Collin Smith will play all of the male roles, including that of Glassett's father on the song "Elohim Lite."

Glassett will not perform live music at the release party. "I'm going to be pushing play, and then I'm doing the lights," he says.

"A really important part of this whole production is the lighting. My music is electronic. There's this organic instrumentation, but it's set to a very specific beat, so the lights are going to be reactive to those beats."

But even though he'll be behind a light board, he'll still be acting, he says. "At the side of the stage we're going to set up a curtain and have a light behind me, so I'm going to be silhouetted, playing certain roles. Accepting phone calls. Just doing little things that move the emphasis from the stage to the side. Kind of like the man behind the curtain."