Toxic Audio takes over where Stomp! and Blue Man Group left off.
By: Susan Van Dongen
Life at the Luxor Las Vegas Hotel Resort and Casino is everything René Ruiz thought it would be truly an adult playground.
As the artistic director and one-fifth of a cappella performance art group Toxic Audio, he was thrilled to recently accept an exclusive engagement at the venue. But, bottom line, it’s just a "day job," a steady income while he and the other "Toxins" tweak their 90-minute performance.
"It’s been an adventure," Mr. Ruiz says. "But really, it’s an opportunity for us to be surrounded by all kinds and styles of entertainment. We’re a group of creative people in an environment of creativity, which inspires us to create even more."
A combination of virtuosic vocals and hip hop hijinx, Toxic Audio is taking a break from its run at the Luxor to come to the Richard P. Marasco Performing Arts Center in Monroe Oct. 16, for a show sponsored by the Monroe Cultural Arts Association. Toxic Audio is a vocal-comedy-improv-theatrical experience featuring just the voices of five performers no instruments. Their repertoire is an eclectic mix of almost every musical genre ranging from pop to jazz, R&B to country to comedy parodies.
Comprised of three men (Mr. Ruiz, Jeremy James and Paul Sperrazza) and two women (Shalisa James and Michelle Mailhot-Valines), Toxic Audio is often compared to Stomp! or Blue Man Group. The 90-minute show combines original skits, quirky musical numbers, improvisational theater and acrobatics completely without dialogue.
Toxic Audio first did its thing in an abandoned storefront at the Orlando International Fringe Festival in 1998, drawing the attention of Disney executives who hired them as featured performers at the Disney/MGM Studios. However, Mr. Ruiz wants to clarify that Toxic Audio never performed for "The Mouse."
"Disney gave us an opportunity to work as vocalists on a daily basis and that kept us together so we could develop our material," he says.
The group rode the wave of "new theater" experiences, such as Cirque du Soleil, which turned the traditional concept of a circus upside down. Similarly, Stomp! re-imagined drum corps and Blast made marching band not-for-nerds anymore.
Mr. Ruiz envisioned the same innovations for a cappella singing staging a performance in a theatrical space with sets, lighting and high-tech sound.
"I was looking at all these pieces," Mr. Ruiz says. "They inspired me to look at something like a cappella singing and making it contemporary, hip and edgy. The concept hit really fast and really big the first year," he says. "Audiences responded immediately, asking us if we had a CD available when we hadn’t even thought about it. But it was this reaction that encouraged us to try and find more material and to experiment more."
A few years later, the group earned top honors at the National Harmony Sweepstakes in California and released a self-produced CD, Chemistry, that was named "Album of the Year" by the Contemporary A Cappella Society of America. In 2005, CARA named Toxic Audio "Artist of the Year." The group has a total of four CDs including Word of Mouth (DRG Records), a compilation of previous self-produced material.
"The Toxins" have made national TV appearances with Ed McMahon and Wayne Brady, opened for acts like Tony Bennett and Kenny G, and have also performed for numerous corporate events in cabarets, on cruise ships and at festivals.
Settling in at the John Houseman Theatre off-Broadway in 2004, Toxic Audio won the Drama Desk Award for "Most Unique Theatrical Experience." A little more than a year later, the invitation came from the Luxor, which will set the stage for a lengthy visit to Japan in 2006. No need to worry about being lost in translation in the Far East, since a Toxic Audio performance doesn’t require any spoken set up and there’s minimal dialogue.
"A lot of it is non-verbal, so it translates really well," Mr. Ruiz says.
With backgrounds in musical theater, voiceover work, daytime TV, jazz studies and hip hop, the members of Toxic Audio have interesting and sometimes contradictory backgrounds, which is where they came up with the name.
"We’re mixing up all these different styles and genres," Mr. Ruiz says. "If you think about it, they shouldn’t work they should make for a ‘toxic’ mixture. Instead, this is what it’s creating, this new form of entertainment.
"It’s a very collaborative venture," he continues. "Everybody is free to bring ideas to explore, with the human voice or musical numbers. It’s a kitchen where we’re all trying out different recipes on each other."
Toxic Audio will perform at the Richard P. Marasco Performing Arts Center, 1629 Perrineville Road, Monroe, Oct. 16, 2 p.m. Tickets cost $20, $18 patrons, students free. Sponsored by the Monroe Cultural Arts Association. For information, call (732) 521-4400 ext. 134. On the Web: www.monroetownshipculturalarts.com. Toxic Audio on the Web: www.toxicaudio.com