Tragedy in 9 Lives

Karen Houppert’s new pop/rock music theater work — set at Andy Warhol’s Factory, circa 1968 — re-creates the “happenings” of that era as audience members, including Warhol himself, find themselves voyeurs, eavesdropping on a cast of characters including The Chelsea Girls, militant feminist Valerie Solanas, and the new journalists who were seduced by the ’60s scene. For 15 minutes, in Warhol’s New York, art, feminism, politics and the press intersected in an exhilarating and dangerous way. Tragedy in 9 Lives taps the experimental vibe of the late 1960s, an unprecedented time when the borders between “high” and “pop” were fluid and the possibilities seemed endless.