Collective Everything Is Terrible! Brings Remixed Lost Kids' Media to St. Louis Stage

A one-night performance of "Kidz Klub," the newest project from the artist collective Everything Is Terrible!, is set for Off Broadway in St. Louis on Friday. The show blends a feature film with live performance, drawing on obscure children's media that most viewers have long forgotten.

Co-founder Dimitri Simakis discussed the production on Monday's "St. Louis on the Air." He said the work grows out of what he called an "unhealthy obsession" with lost media that took hold around 2008. "We've just been collecting thousands and thousands of tapes," he said. "It's just endless."

In its early days, the collective concentrated on splicing together clips from different VHS tapes. One example Simakis offered was pairing a few seconds of an anti-drug after-school special with the voiceover from a low-budget Bible story, producing something new and darkly funny.

Posting short clips on the group's website eventually stopped being enough, and the idea of a live show took shape. The production has since developed into a spectacle in which lavishly costumed performers appear on stage, each with a story to tell. "We wanted something physical, something that would last beyond whatever website we're putting it up to watch," Simakis said. He described the St. Louis show as a little live performance followed by a little movie, adding, "We really want to just assault all your senses."

The film is demanding on its own terms. "Kidz Klub" is the group's eighth feature-length movie, and it does not follow a rigid plot. Instead, it moves through a narrative that borrows and twists the messages of the original films. For the filmmakers, Simakis said, the challenge is: "How can we create a narrative out of thousands and thousands of other stories?"

Another difficulty lies in the source material itself. Simakis flatly described much of it as propaganda, including films meant to dramatize religious or civic lessons and ones in which adults lecture young viewers to mind their manners, believe in God and obey their teachers. He said that critique is central to the collective's outlook. "That all media is tricking you, all media is lying to you in some way," he said.

"Kidz Klub" has been in development since 2019 and pulls from DVDs of the early 2000s as well as VHS tapes. Simakis said he is not concerned about running out of material soon, even as VHS collections become steadily harder to find.

The show is promoted as "a psychedelic retelling of the American myth," but Simakis cautioned against assuming its audience is limited to stoners or fans of psychedelics. He said the film is precisely made. "You can enjoy it. You can just let it kind of wash over you if you want it to."

Everything Is Terrible! presents "Kidz Klub!" at 8 p.m. on March 11 at Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, MO 63118.