Matt Brownlie Is Daniel Johnston, Beginning Tonight

In the unlikely event that you haven’t heard about this before now, yep, the title there is pretty much true. Tonight (Wed., December 2nd) up at DiverseWorks, The Catastrophic Theatre — several members of which theater-going folk will probably recognize from the sadly-departed Infernal Bridegroom Productions — is staging a “preview” of its new play, Life is Happy and Sad, which features none other than Bring Back the Guns frontman, awesome songwriter, and all-round cool guy Matt Brownlie in his first acting role.

Brownlie’s playing quirky/strange fellow songwriter/musician (and artist) Daniel Johnston in his earlier, college-dwelling years, in a play TCT co-overlord Jason Nodler built around a never-before-heard tape Johnston created and sent to a friend. I haven’t heard/seen it, unfortunately, but apparently the tape consisted of the youthful Johnston recording a “conversation” of his own personal thoughts & feelings, plus whatever songs he wanted to share, for his friend, and it sounds like a pretty intriguing glimpse into the man’s mind.

The backstory to the whole thing’s pretty neat, as well — check out Joe Mathlete‘s excellent writeup for the details on that. And I’m told the second part of the play (the first part is a big monologue by “Johnston”/Brownlie) features local glam revivalists Roky Moon & Bolt as, well, the band in the thing, so that’s no bad news, either.

In short, I’m hearing good things all around about this. Go, go, go. Tonight’s preview costs $50 and includes refreshments & a private party with the cast and crew, and if you’d rather just see the play itself, it’ll be running at DW December 3-5, 9-12, and 16-19, all for pay-what-you-can admission.