The Flaming Lips are sending their pink robots to Broadway. Here’s the plot, according to Wayne Coyne, for Yoshimi! The Musical! (or whatever the hell they’re going to call it):

There’s the real world and then there’s this fantastical world. This girl, the Yoshimi character, is dying of something. And these two guys are battling to come visit her in the hospital. And as one of the boyfriends envisions trying to save the girl, he enters this other dimension where Yoshimi is this Japanese warrior and the pink robots are an incarnation of her disease. It’s almost like the disease has to win in order for her soul to survive. Or something like that.

The script will be by West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin.

Lump that with the Edward Scissorhands ballet that’s driving the middle-schooler goths wild (and coming to the 5th Avenue Theater in April) and Donald Byrd’s dance pieces (this weekend at the Moore) set to music by Nirvana and Mystikal, and we might be looking at a phenomenon: unironic pop-performance art.