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Much as I hate to keep harping on about this, the fact is that, from time to time, we all need a brief respite from the unrelenting torrent of bad news filling our personal timelines. What has been keeping me sane as of late is The Big Box Set, an adorably awesome and homespun variety show made in Portland that airs locally on Open Signal’s public access channels and is available to all on YouTube.
Produced by musicians and artists Elyse Schrock and Richard Alex Olsen under their Playground Studio moniker, the show is a quick burst of unforced whimsy and jubilant energy. The pair choose a theme (Halloween, candy, the Old West, to name a few) and build an episode around it, complete with sets and costumes. Into each new world, they invite a band to play a few songs and intersperse that short set with charmingly hokey filmed scenes or animations. All of it, apart from the live music, is built from scratch by the couple. The episodes air sporadically on Open Signal’s various streams with the latest having just hit the airwaves and their YouTube channel on March 24.
“It’s so much fun to build these little worlds,” Schrock says, crammed into an uncomfortable table at Monti’s Cafe on Southeast Stark Street. “I knew that we were getting older, and being in our late 30s, I was like, ‘Well, what’s a way that we can still be part of the music scene?’ We love music and it’s hard to go to shows, especially doing this show. So it would be cool to…”
“Bring the show to us,” Olsen says, finishing the thought.
The Big Box Set is a true amalgam of the couple’s various interests. Both grew up obsessing over animation, be it cartoons or Rankin-Bass stop-motion holiday specials (Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, The Little Drummer Boy) and underground music. When they got older and each moved to the Bay Area, they started dabbling in both, with Olsen diving deep into teaching himself animation during the pandemic lockdowns. It was around that time, too, that the pair met via a dating app. “We hung out and talked about art and music,” Olsen remembers.
“And what our dream was,” Schrock interjects. “Doing something like The Big Box Set was…”
“We didn’t have it defined yet,” Olsen says, picking up the thread, “but we were talking all around it.”
The pieces fell into place after the two relocated to Portland a little over two years ago. They found a house big enough to host live bands and that gave them the room to indulge in their other creative work. The idea of bringing those two together in the form of The Big Box Set was an instant catalyst. “It was probably about an hour or so of just talking about this exact concept,” Olsen remembers, “and I just went and built the façade of the TV” that provides the proscenium for each episode.
After successfully testing out the concept with a space-themed episode featuring a performance by post-punk duo Extra Letters and an action cartoon by Olsen, the couple are now devoting the bulk of their free time to making The Big Box Set. Only six installments have been released to date, but each one shows them getting stronger as designers, animators, and actors. And in addition to the musical acts they’ve booked so far, including country-pop ensemble Cruise Control and shoegazers Rayon, they’ve started to receive contributions of videos and animations from outsiders to help give the show the community feel that Olsen and Schrock always dreamed of.
What the couple have less time to do is get the word out about what they are up to. They do have some devoted fans who subscribe to their YouTube channel and support their Patreon account. But as they look to the future of The Big Box Set, their ambitions are modest.
“The only goal we have is monetary,” Schrock says. “To be able to fund the cost of the episodes and then make more money so we can pay the people that help us. Right now, that’s all we have to figure out.”
That will have to wait a little bit longer, though, as the couple leave me to hurry home and clean up the mess from making the next episode before the next band arrives.
SEE IT: The Big Box Set streams at youtube.com/@PlaylandStudio.