My Barbarian’s Broke People’s Baroque Peoples’ Theater evokes an excess of theatrical styles, from Baroque spectacle to camp drag, to present the absurdities of the American financial crisis as performance of wastefulness, trashiness, and class warfare. It is the latest in a series of collective alter egos My Barbarian has assumed over the past decade which confront their internal conflicts over patronage, money, artistic quality, and other mythologies.

Structured as a play within a game within a play, the performance is an amalgamated decoupage of detoured theater texts, ornate musical numbers, and masked interactions. A recital of the grandeur of excess executive through impoverished means, Broke People’s Broke Peoples’ Theater depicts an encounter between an imagined theater company and an audience.

Broke People’s Broke Peoples’ Theater is written and directed by My Barbarian (Malik Gaines, Jade Gordon, and Alexandro Segade). Music by Gaines and Segade with scenic design by Gordon and Segade. The Broke Baroque festival features opera company members from The Industry Jon Lee Keenan and Maria Elena Altany, joined by vocal artist Joanna Lynn-Jacobs and multi-instrumentalist Mark Golamco, performing original “baroque-esque” compositions by My Barbarian. Performance artists C. Bain, Mallory Fabian, and Zenaido Zamora complete the ensemble in their roles as Masked Dancers.

This is an ICA LA, My Barbarian, and The Industry co-production.