By Artie Capshaw

How Hard Can It Be?

Tippy from Tippy and the Tipsies is in a community production of that famous rock musical about the religious hippie, and it’s gotten her converted.

“Who needs bands? It’s theater for me from now on!,” she croons. Asked if she’s bothered to inform the tipsies of this bold new performance direction, she demurs. “Well, I probably oughtta see what else is out there. I like performing.” Spoken like a trooper.

But the ratio of club hoppers to theater geeks remains unchanged, since someone else is switching ranks, over on the other side of the local music/local theater cultural divide:

Robert Lipsyte, he’ll remind you, is “a theater guy.” He founded Work Theater 10 years ago, when he was still at the college on the hill, and has mounted “between 12 and 20 productions, depending how you count.” (A lot of one-act plays were involved.) The most popular of these shows were seen by maybe 25 people, the least popular by two.

Lipsyte would go out with the cast to Bull’s or Hamilton’s after rehearsals. He’d see the generally larger crowds in the club scene. And, he admits, “I got jealous.

“You can’t imagine the amount of work that goes into presenting a play. There’s the memorizing, all the technical stuff, rehearsals. Plus I write my own plays and act in them.” You can hear the “hmph” in his voice.

Well, if you can’t get them to join you, put a beat on it.

So Robert Lipsyte became Bobby Lip, and Work Theater became a band called Work Theater: Opus One. Opening night is Thursday at the Bullfinch. Bobby Lip sings, plays keyboards and wrote all the songs, some of them based on his experimental plays like “Succatash High” and “Ex-Text Next.”

“I’ve worked with interior rhymes and choral refrains in several of my chamber plays, and it’s not that different than songwriting.”

But wait, there’s more. “I want this to be a valid rock band, but the experience will be mostly metatheatrical.” Got that?

The Arps, The Huelsenbecks, and Emmy H. are at the Bullfinch tonight, a pretty lush theatrical spectacle of their own, assuming they bring the theremin and the bondage gear… Everyman His Own Football, Rongwrong and The Blind Man are telling certain people their Hamilton’s gig tonight has been cancelled. But they didn’t tell us, and the Hamilton family’s clueless too. All our queries to anyone who might know have been left unanswered. Stay importuned…