Signal Booster: Matt Werner Brings the Burner Experience to the Stage

One element of the musical is to bring together warring sides of society—be they Sharks, be they Jets, be they 50s greasers, or sweater-clad soshes. Heather Zimmerman of Palo Alto Weekly interviews the man behind Burning Man: The Musical, which takes That Thing in the Desert as an opportunity for connection between techies who could loosen up and hippies who could tighten up.

Oakland-raised author Matt Werner, creator of Burning Man: The Musical, took as his point of departure his own story. He's not just a Burner but also a former Mountain View hacker; he still works as a senior technical writer at Google. As he tells Zimmerman: “The original techies were actually counterculture people back in the ’70s … [it’s] a false dichotomy, techie vs. hippie, because there was at one point a tremendous crossover.” When developing the play, Zimmer reports, Werner solicited the feedback from dedicated Burners at various test performances. “I wanted to make sure that the tone of it is ‘laughing with us’ and not ‘laughing at us.’”

With music by Gene Back and choreography by Ari Grooves, the Tyler Milliron-directed production can be viewed (via rental or purchase) on Broadway on Demand and Streaming Musicals. There are hopes to stage a live version after the pandemic.

Read more here: Life in a Peninsula hacker house helped inspire tale of techies vs. hippies in ‘Burning Man: The Musical’