Artistic director Alex Timbers and his New York based theater company, Les Freres Corbusier (www.lesfreres.org), dissect and reinvent historical figures, infusing the subject matter with equal parts academia and punk rock--and staging it with a good dose of madcap multimedia effects. In January, Los Angeles's Center Theatre Group (www.centertheatregroup.org) will debut the company's Wild West-infused rock musical Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City. Timbers talked to us about the production, which mixes historical events with bordello decor and a live soundtrack of emo rock.

How did you start the theater company?
Les Freres Corbusier was established in 2003 with the goal of creating work about historical figures and subject matter through irreverent contexts and idioms. The work was intended to lampoon academia while simultaneously celebrating it, and in the same way, lampooning avant-gardist theater troupes while also embracing them. We focus on historical figures whom people might know two sentences about.

How did you conceive of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson?
I wrote the book, and Michael Friedman from the terrifi c experimental theater company the Civilians wrote all the songs. This is our fi rst collaboration. It started with an interest in emo music--we were interested in that as a stylistic trope. [Emo] songs are so sincere that they're hilarious, but they're also moving and truthful. We're interested in investigating highly emotive expression as a theatrical style. We started thinking, Who is an emo figure from history? Andrew Jackson is the ultimate emo president! He would literally bleed himself with his wife. He was angry and angsty. That was our jumping-off point.

How does that influence the look of the play?
It's going to be Wild West-emo couture. It's going to have a period vibe with contemporary style. A Wild West brothel fi lled with taxidermy. Like if Deadwood were a music video: big red velour curtains, a deer head. It's going to be fun.

Is there multimedia?
Yes, there's video, but it's more textural. It will hopefully confuse the audience as to how we pull it off. We aren't doing big concert visuals, but there will be battle smoke and live music. There's a three-piece rock band, and everyone sings. It started off as a play with music, and it's turned into having songs at regular intervals. But it isn't really a musical--just a really good play with really good music. --Andi Teran