Photo by James MedcraftIn 2005, Yeah Yeah Yeahs front woman Karen O and Sam Speigel of N.A.S.A wrote a collection of songs called Stop the Virgens. The music that came out of them was deeply personal to Karen and, rather than releasing it, she opted to keep it a secret, locking it away and awaiting the right opportunity to present it to the world. More than just an album, the concept that is Stop The Virgens has been concealed for seven years.Last year we helped Karen, who was aided by an all-star team of collaborators, to conceive the live component of Stop The Virgens. The result is a genre-blending performance dubbed a “psycho-opera,” which debuted at St. Ann’s Warehouse in DUMBO, Brooklyn last October as part of The Creators Project: New York 2011 event.We followed Karen and her team for several months to uncover the nuances of their creative process, finding ourselves at the group’s “band camp” in the Berkshires where the musicians—including Speigel, Nick Zinner, and Money Mark—spent a week reorienting themselves with the music. From there, we met the Virgens back in New York and spoke with Director Adam Rapp and Co-Creator and Production Designer K.K. Barrett, who gave some context to the story behind the emotional autobiographical journey that lies within the subtext of Stop The Virgens.In Part 2, we watch the production come together as Karen, Choreographer Mariangela Lopez, and the 40 Virgens workshop the songs in rehearsal, and Christian Joy tells the story of how she first became Karen’s costume designer.As Rapp mentions, hearing music for the first time live is a rarity these days, and the fleeting nature of the performance’s existence made the experience all the more special and artistically cathartic.Hear clips of Karen’s new songs “Last Lullaby” and “Get Em On The Run” and watch how this seven-year journey has transformed Karen as an artist in our two-part documentary.
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