--- title: Burning Man the Musical Viral Video description: It's techies vs. hippies set to a tune canonical: https://time.com/4011031/burning-man-the-musical/ author: Melissa Locker article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-08-26T11:27:35.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T07:23:50.663Z og:title: Burning Man the Musical Viral Video og:description: It's techies vs. hippies set to a tune og:url: https://time.com/4011031/burning-man-the-musical/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Burning Man the Musical Viral Video twitter:description: It's techies vs. hippies set to a tune twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # 'Burning Man: The Musical' Is Now A Thing by [Melissa Locker](https://time.com/author/melissa-locker/) ## Melissa Locker Aug 26, 2015 11:27 AM UTC by [Melissa Locker](https://time.com/author/melissa-locker/) ## Melissa Locker Aug 26, 2015 11:27 AM UTC Move over [_Downton Abbey_](http://time.com/3931930/downton-abbey-musical/), [James Bond](http://time.com/3947650/james-bond-musical-spectre-broadway/) and even you, [Donald Trump](http://time.com/4001366/josh-groban-trump/), there is a new musical in town: _Burning Man: The Musical._ [The comedy musical](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq15e4%5FxydyZwjz3zFUa4gA) opened very off-off Broadway — on the internet, specifically — and is only five minutes long, but it packs a lot of action and surprisingly deep character development into its grand opening number. There’s the eager techie boarding a school bus bound for Black Rock City with visions of hanging out with Elon Musk and Google execs in his eyes. There’s the grizzled, wizened hippy and the starry-eyed girl bemoaning the loss of the Burning Man festival that was before “the techies came to plug n’ play” and singing about “when the playa was clean / and techies stayed in SOMA.” All that in just the opening number! The second act offers even more with a tech coder who is trying to develop an app for drone delivery of water at Burning Man and ends up singing a heart-lifting number that asks, “What would Steve Jobs do?” Clearly Steve Jobs would watch this video. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4011031/burning-man-the-musical/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4011031/burning-man-the-musical/"},"headline":"'Burning Man: The Musical' Is Now A Thing","datePublished":"2015-08-26T11:27:35.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T07:23:50.663Z","description":"It's techies vs. hippies set to a tune","url":"https://time.com/4011031/burning-man-the-musical/","keywords":["Newsfeed","Internet","festivals","viral","Musicals","Viral Videos","Burning Man"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Melissa Locker","jobTitle":"","url":"https://time.com/author/melissa-locker/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-newsfeed/","name":"Newsfeed"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4011031/burning-man-the-musical/","name":"'Burning Man: The Musical' Is Now A Thing"}}]}] ```