In Seth Godin’s book "This is Marketing," Godin focuses one of his case studies on the success of the musical "Be More Chill" (prior to its ill-fated transfer to Broadway). Godin’s point in discussing the cult-favorite musical is that the show wasn’t created to be popular with critics but with the teenage fans who created animatics and fanfiction inspired by it.

Many a theatre kid my age will recognize "Be More Chill" but will be hard pressed to remember which theatre first produced it (for those wondering, it was New Jersey’s Two River Theater). Even the more recently popular musical Ride the Cyclone, which has made waves as TikTok trends, is not popularly associated with its original producing entity, Atomic Vaudeville.

However, StarKid Productions, also known as Team StarKid or the more colloquial StarKid, is consistently well-known in relation to the musicals they produce. Ask a theatre kid if they know musicals like Twisted, Firebringer, or their most famous show, A Very Potter Musical; if they do, they’ll also likely know that StarKid produced it.

This disparity is on full display when looking at these company’s socials. Two River Theater and Atomic Vaudeville have about 20,000 and 2,000 Instagram followers, respectively. Compare these numbers with the popular new works they each produced: almost 320,000 Instagram posts are tagged with #bemorechill, and #ridethecyclone claims 17,000 posts. A single show at either theatre inspired greater audience engagement with the institution as a whole. In contrast, StarKid’s 2016 musical Firebringer (chosen because it premiered in 2016, one year after Be More Chill) has almost 45,000 tagged posts on Instagram, while StarKid’s official account boasts a whopping 170,000 followers.

On the other hand, people readily associate movie and videogame titles with their production companies. People are excited to watch the next artsy A24 film, knowing that they produced acclaimed titles like "Ladybird" and "Everything, Everywhere, All at Once." They’re ready to play Bethesda’s next open-world adventure, having seen playthroughs of or played for themselves games like The Elder Scrolls and Fallout. And don’t even get me started on Disney’s following.

Why has StarKid been consistently connected to their highly popular shows when other theatre companies have struggled? I believe the answer lies in fandom. StarKid has long recognized the power of their fans, especially within a fan community. Their earliest titles capitalized on the fan followings of existing properties and they continued to leverage the power of fan communities to become a fully fandom-fueled brand.

Starkid’s fandom is particularly strong due to three factors:

1. Their shows are thematically consistent.
This section could similarly be titled “The A24 effect.” Those who follow the movies will understand that film distribution company A24 is associated with a very particular type of movie: often an indie darling, A24 movies are the kind of movies to make the audience think rather than being easy blockbuster entertainment. In fact, A24  is so strongly branded through its fans that (perhaps inadvertently) some viewers have associated films they had no part in with the company. StarKid has exhibited the same consistency since their first production, "A Very Potter Musical," in 2009. Initially, StarKid’s shows parodied existing intellectual properties, including "Harry Potter," "Aladdin," "Batman," "The Oregon Trail," and "Star Wars." Even as the company moved away from parody, each musical they produced adopted a similarly self-aware and comedic style as exemplified in "The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals." In other words, their shows have consistently matched their strong brand – in fact, StarKid’s brand is so tied to their work that their name references their most oldest and popular musical, "A Very Potter Musical."

2. They make their shows widely accessible for fans to consume and discuss.
One of the most fundamental keys to unlocking "Be More Chill's" rise in popularity is how anyone, located anywhere, could listen to the musical’s soundtrack that Two River Theater published on Spotify. Without that easy access point into the musical, only a select few people would be able to experience it and talk about it.

Fifteen years ago, the Team StarKid YouTube channel posted their first musical. Because of YouTube’s video processing capabilities, the show was split into twenty-three five-to-ten-minute chunks. Despite having to click on a new video every few minutes, millions of people have watched the show (the first part has 19 million views, while the final installment has 3.5 million).

In fact, posting their musicals on YouTube is particularly advantageous, as each YouTube video is accompanied by a comments section, an easy and accessible forum for viewers to immediately share their thoughts with others. From there, viewers are able to draw from what they watch together to create meme compilations, lyric videos, fanfiction, and spark greater conversation. These audiences are empowered to make these creations from the company’s parody-based branding: if StarKid can make musicals based on existing franchises, why shouldn’t they be able to make their own content from StarKid’s musicals? Eventually, as viewers are inspired to create more elaborate and unique responses, they may feel the urge to post their work to other platforms.

3. Their social media presence invites audiences to share their responses far and wide.
StarKid can be found on the major social media platforms – Instagram, X, Facebook, TikTok – but they make a point of being visible on more niche sites, as well. Their Subreddit (a community page on the social forum site Reddit) has 29,000 members, putting them in the top 4% of Subreddits sitewide. Their Tumblr blog posts latest updates, and their official fandom Wiki documents the fifteen-year history of the company. If a fan wants to create work surrounding their favorite StarKid show but prefers to draw rather than create videos on YouTube, they can post to a multitude of sites with built-in StarKid-loving communities due to the company’s many social media. Their online presence reflects the intersections between their work and fandom culture, generating varied spaces for people to discuss their works, old and new.

There are other sites where StarKid has an unofficial presence but is unable to officially stake their claim. Tumblr has recently created community spaces, a project still in Beta and therefore the burgeoning Starkid space is fan-run. The Team StarKid RPF (real person fiction) category on fanfiction site AO3 has over 200 stories, and their Hatchetfield series has inspired over 5,000 fanfictions. StarKid walks a fine line between social media that invites new works and social media that acts as a moderating presence — some fans may be too shy to post their often-explicit fiction to AO3 if they thought company members would see it. Nevertheless, StarKid intentionally cultivates spaces for their work to travel outside of its YouTube roots, inspiring audiences to utilize diverse media to share their shows and bring audiences not native to YouTube into the StarKid fandom.

Had StarKid simply uploaded A Very Potter Musical fifteen years ago and stopped there, people would have talked about that show but wouldn’t have thought about the company behind it. Instead, StarKid intentionally made themselves visible within community-building and fandom spaces and continued to produce work that would engage a similar audience of nerdy and funny theatre kids. StarKid recognized that fandom culture is about sharing your interests with others; in many ways, "A Very Potter Musical" is a continuation of Harry Potter fandom culture, connected to an existing franchise and made for other fans to consume and enjoy. StarKid simply leaned into the fandom culture that made their musical so popular and applied it to an entire theatre company, allowing their name to persist today.

Written by Bria Weisz, a graduate student in the M.F.A. in Theatre - Arts Leadership program at Virginia Tech.