On the stage of Chicago Shakespeare Theater right now sits a two-story, life-size doll house, looming under overly dimmed lights and veiled by an ominous haze pumped in from offstage. The set, designed by Fly Davis, creepily beckons an audience that will soon fill the seats of the Navy Pier theater.
“Paranormal Activity,” the new stage play written by Levi Holloway (whose last work in Chicago was the Michael Shannon-led “Turret,” which he wrote and directed) makes its North American premiere at Chicago Shakespeare this week. The play is based on the award-winning film series of the same name, notable for its original press run in 2009, when the trailer famously didn’t show any clips from the actual movie — opting instead to show test audiences watching the movie, visibly horrified.
The film series, produced by horror aficionado studio Blumhouse, now spans seven movies, and is known for its found-footage style of filmmaking. The producers of the play version are betting they can do the same thing in a theater — despite the obvious limitations of a live action staging. They also are intent on giving the story a new look and feel.
To create this new installment to the well-known franchise, Holloway teamed up with Felix Barrett, artistic director of Punchdrunk, an innovative theater company in the United Kingdom that is known for its immersive approach to theater. Each creative brings a slew of relevant credits: Holloway’s suspenseful 2019 play “Grey House” made it from A Red Orchid, where he’s an ensemble member, to Broadway; Barrett’s Punchdrunk production “Sleep No More,” a fully immersive supernatural flip of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” had a 14-year run in the McKittrick Hotel in New York.
But “found footage” remains a theme, even in a theatrical setting. “It’s a found footage genre,” said Holloway. “So they’re saying that what the audience is experiencing is real. That became really interesting in terms of a way in. How do you do that to a theater audience? How do you displace them from reality and make them feel unsafe, even for a moment?”
Part of the answer is that set. The house, even at first glance, is off-putting. From a seat in the audience, it feels almost voyeuristic, reminiscent of Hitchcock’s “Rear Window,” when the audience peers into the home and lives of a married couple whom you quickly figure is doomed.
“We needed a set that was hyper naturalistic,” said Barrett, the show’s director. “We wanted to create a sense of peering in and not wanting to look too close, because you see yourself there.”
Holloway’s script is original, but lives in the world of the films. He centers the story on a married couple (played by Cher Álvarez and Patrick Heusinger), who are troubled by secrecy in their relationship — and that’s before being haunted.
Holloway, the playwright, wrote an original script but it lives in the world of the films. He centers the story on a married couple, played by Cher Álvarez and Patrick Heusinger, who are troubled by secrecy in their relationship — and that’s before being haunted.
Manuel Martinez/Manuel Martinez/WBEZ
Barrett, who typically produces shows outside of theaters, saw the idea of scaring people in their seats as a new challenge. “I spend all my working life trying to invoke a sense of feeling in an audience,” he said. “Wouldn’t it be rad to do it in a theater for an audience in the safety of an auditorium? To actually make that space crumble and be a bit threatening?”
In interviews a few days before the show is to be test driven for previews, the creative team stays tight-lipped on the details of how they will scare the audience. But they have employed Chris Fisher, who worked as illusion designer for “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” during which actors used actual illusions and slight of hand on stage. His list of impressive tricks for that show included performers transforming into each other before the eyes of the audience.
“Paranormal Activity” was first staged at Leeds Playhouse in England, with Heusinger in the original cast. (Chicago will be the first North American city to stage it.) Of playwright Holloway, “he has the kind of brain, and intellectual energy, to tap into the scary qualities of human beings and what is frightening,” Heusinger said.
During a recent practice run for the creative team, Heusinger said there were vocal screams in the theater. “There’s new stuff in it that didn’t happen before [in England], in the illusion territory, and in the horror territory. I’m curious how people are gonna react.”
Álvarez said the real horror potential lives within the characters’ relationship. “It’s kind of like the audience is a fly on the wall,” she said. “And we’re letting them into this marriage and this life that we’re trying to rebuild and transition. I think people should feel uncomfortable. We welcome the uncomfortable. It’s like we are all going to face our fears together.”
“I really wanted to talk about marriage and trust and how somebody’s past can catch up with them,” said Holloway, who tapped into some childhood trauma for the scripting.
“We’re introduced to a couple who seem very familiar to us. And sometimes our weaponry is in the mundane. They’re not extreme characters. They’re very human. So, when they’re met with the uncanny or the impossible, we ask ourselves an audience, ‘What would I do’ and ‘Would I survive?’
That question of survival exists not only in the pair’s interaction with the paranormal, but also with each other. “That intersection is where we try to drop the audience into moments of being unsafe,” Holloway added.
The movies found ways to be scary without the use of actual ghouls, ghosts or monsters. Barrett said the show leans into a similar style. “There’s a sort of strange poetry and magic to the things you don’t quite see,” he said. “And that restraint was what drew us to the film, because actually, it’s the ultimate slow burn. You see very little, and it just peaks and then crescendos at the very end.”