Mark Nichols

In 1987 The "epic rock fable" Little Boy Goes to Hell, was released as a four-record set with book and marked the composer's first attempt at the quirky and ambitiously playful American style of musical theater writing which he says came from "his own twisted musical and spiritual life". At the time the show was being created he was consistently experiencing temporal lobe epilepsy which he said was symptomatic of what he calls a "fear of fear itself". The semi-autobiographical sprawling journey story revolves around a man who believes he's the devil. The central conflict concerns his "Psychologist's" challenge to "find a fresh soul", one "given willingly". The bulk of the story follows a young boy's journey home from the hospital as he meets the Jungian clown archetypes along the forest pathway. "As a young man I created a storybook hell to calm my realworld fear of hell". It apparently worked as the composer's epilepsy subsided a few years after Little Boy was first performed at Seattle's Annex Theater in 1988. Goldmine Magazine said of Little Boy: "At last Seattle has a rock musical to do itself proud." The show was also given the award "Art Project of the Year," by The Backlash Magazine.

The most widely popular of the Nichols epic rock operas was created by Erik Davis, Christopher Fuelling, Dana Harrison and Mark Nichols, based on the story of the real-life Burning Man festival, which takes place every year on the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, and its real-life founders. The opera jumps between three time periods in the festival's history: 1986, when "the man" was first burned on San Francisco's Baker Beach; 1996, when the festival experienced its first real tragedies and deep philosophical clashes; and the present day, as seen through the eyes of three "newbies" who undergo a series of unnerving trials during their first 24-hours on the desert. The opera had its first production in 2009 at San Francisco's Teatro Zinzanni and played to standing ovations. Publicity for the opera described it as "theatrical freak-out that combines rock opera, vaudeville, and a Dionysian revival show that is just as inspired and terrified by current events as you are. Part mutant mystery play, part crash-course in proactive future culture." The concept of epic rock opera seems to have grown in this opera to include an audience-immersive tour of crazy art cars and weirdos and "makers", which, like Burning Man itself, asks there be "no spectators."

Mark Nichols (born February 22, 1964) is an American playwright, composer, and lyricist, best known for his musicals Little Boy Goes to Hell (1988), Joe Bean (2003), and How to Survive the Apocalypse (2009). He is also known in the northwestern United States for his work with Fred Jamison (aka Beaverchief of the Lummi) for whom he arranged 20 Northwest Coast Native songs for orchestra, girl choir, and rock band, performed by the Seattle Symphony in 1996.