What would make downtown art scenesters head to the Chinatown storefront that houses Terence Koh's gallery, Asia Song Society, to sit on the floor in a crowded room, dripping with sweat in 85 degree heat for 50 minutes on July 11th? Artist Rachel Mason, who created a musical performance of horror writer H.P.Lovecraft's 1920s short story "The Outsider," a tale of an isolated, lonely man who discovers he is a monster after his first contact with humans.

Mason cast an interesting mix of performers to bring the production to life through live music, dance, and singing, calling upon Stu Watson to narrate, gymnast Jasmine Daly, choreographer Michelle Moya, Venezuelan folk punk musician Yva Las Vegass, Mason's band Little Band of Sailors, and more to weave the story together. Performers wearing cat masks played guitar and even performed a yoga dance of sorts, incorporating headstands with wheel and downward dog poses, while dancers in plastic flower-topped yellow baseball caps rollicked through a scene as the "Outsider" made his way through the forest.

The artist showed a projection of herself scaling a building wearing a silver body suit and helmet as she danced around on stage donning the same spacey costume. Although the sound was shoddy at times, Mason's smooth singing was a treat to hear. At one point in the performance, Mason ran through the crowd and out the door into the street to dance before returning to the stage. If the whole thing sounds bizarre, that's because it was. As one audience member put it after the show, "It wasn't bad...." For people to stick around that long in a room without a/c during a humid summer day, it probably had to be not that bad.