As a veteran of hundreds of concerts, I've learned the drill: you go to a show, the act plays to the audience, and the crowd listens (or doesn't). For all of the talk about musicians being eccentric, it's extremely rare to see a show that deviates from that norm.

A Steve Burns [ tickets ] and the Struggle show isn't like that at all.

First some background: Steve Burns has negotiated his way through an unusual life. He spent seven years in front of a blue screen as the human star of the mostly-animated interactive children's series "Blues Clues." His next foray into the public eye involved widespread rumors that he died of a heroin overdose. He's now an aspiring musician with close ties to The Flaming Lips. He recorded a strong album titled "Songs for Dustmites," which he released in 2003.

Burns has since come up with a simple but extremely effective way to challenge the idea of a typical concert: give the audience some control. On Saturday (3/21) at SXSW, he put his idea on display with a wildly creative show.

Before Burns opened his set, small laser pointers were passed out to members of the audience, who--as you might expect--immediately began shining their red dots all around the venue, which is a simple but beautiful old church. Burns--who, with his shaved head, glasses, facial hair and extra pounds no longer much resembles the guy on "Blues Clues"--began the show with an introductory video explaining that the audience would choose its adventure during the upcoming performance.

From there, various scenes--featuring a protagonist puppet with human co-stars--were shown on the screen, accompanied by Burns' music. After each scene and song, the crowd, voting by aiming laser pointers at the appropriate spot on the screen, would determine what would happen next, leading to a new scene that would correspond to another one of Burns' songs.

If there's a downside to this, it's that the video element draws attention away from Burns' music, which is quite good. His second album, "Deep Sea Recovery Efforts," is due out this summer, and the new material he played on Saturday seemed to effectively mine the same melancholy indie-rock vein as "Dustmites."

Perhaps because I was already familiar with the songs, the two musical highlights for me were the last two songs of the set: the Burns original "Mighty Little Man," from "Dustmites," and his set-ending cover of Galaxie 500's "Strange."