When Nina enters her first air guitar competition to get vengeance on her ex-fiancé (D Vicious), she thinks winning will be easy. As she befriends a group of charismatic nerds all committed to becoming the next air guitar national champion, she discovers that there's more to air guitar than playing pretend. Throughout the show, she finds herself in her favorite songs, finds love with a fellow competitor, and ultimately achieves “Airness,” the extent to which a performance transcends the imitation of a real guitar and becomes an art form in and of itself.

The production involved wireless reinforcement of the cast, including body-worn and handheld wireless microphones. I applied effects to the “hooded figure” microphone, when he delivers the invitation to the final Dark Horse qualifying event, which was designed to resemble the music video to Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart.”

In competitive air guitar around the world, competitors perform a 60-second solo performance with an imaginary guitar-like instrument. Each performance is played to one minute (60 seconds) of a song. The 60 seconds can start anywhere in the song. The instrument must be invisible and be a guitar. Each character has a winning qualifying regional performance, which takes place to a 60-second cut of a song that is emblematic of their character.

Each regional qualifying event takes place in a different city in the play, and so we used radio-style transitions, incorporating the button of the previous scene air guitar song as if it was on the radio in the new city, to help communicate the change in venue.

Department of Theatre and Dance
University of Colorado - Boulder

Director:
Jenna Moll-Reyes

Scenic Design:
Connor Robertson

Costume Design:
Celeste Fenton

Lighting Design:
Rachel Fields

Sound Design:
Matthew Eckstein

Photo Credit:
RDGPhotography