Frontmezzjunkies reports: Paranormal Activity begins Broadway previews tonight, and I’m already reconsidering my bravery

By Ross

I’m not sure I would say that I love being scared, even in the right circumstances. Fear and I, it seems, have a complicated relationship. I love a good roller coaster, that is true, mainly because I know exactly what I have signed up for. Theatre is another matter entirely. Put me in a dark room with a story I cannot predict, and the suggestion that something might be waiting around the next corner, and my imagination will happily do most of the frightening for me. Which makes the arrival of Paranormal Activity on Broadway a slightly questionable life choice for this theatre critic.

Previews begin today, Friday, August 14, at the August Wilson Theatre, with the official opening set for Tuesday, August 25. And I’m already nervous just writing that, particularly since my press night isn’t until the first week of September. Written by Levi Holloway and directed by Felix Barrett, Paranormal Activity follows James and Lou as they move from Chicago to London in an attempt to escape their past, only to discover that places are not haunted; people are. The production features an original story inspired by the film franchise, bringing its ghost story to the stage with the intimacy of live theatre.

Reports from previous productions describe audiences screaming, jumping from their seats, and even fainting. Which has me rethinking this. It seems that everything about the creative team suggests an experience designed to blur the line between theatrical illusion and genuine unease. Chris Fisher, whose stage illusions helped make Stranger Things: The First Shadow such a phenomenon, is responsible for the production’s supernatural effects, joined by designers Fly Davis, Anna Watson, Gareth Fry, and Luke Halls.

That idea is what has me particularly curious. As I wrote recently while looking ahead to both Paranormal Activity and 2:22 – A Ghost Story, fear inside a theatre feels strangely different from fear anywhere else. Hundreds of strangers sit together in the dark, knowing perfectly well that they have paid to be nervous for the next few hours. Every gasp can ripple through the audience. Every nervous laugh can become contagious. And, in my case, there is always the possibility that I will spend part of the evening with my knees up, hugged in tight, and peeking at the stage between my fingers.

Cher Álvarez plays Lou opposite Travis A. Knight as James, with Shannon Cochran as Carolanne and Eva Kaminsky as Etheline Cotgrave. I cannot honestly promise any of them that I will watch every frightening moment without occasionally hiding or looking away. Experience suggests that is highly unlikely. But that is part of the strange appeal of putting a ghost story in a theatre. I may know that I have willingly entered the theatre, taken my seat, and surrendered myself to the darkness, but once the lights go down, my imagination has a way of forgetting all of that.

And that is where I want Paranormal Activity to get me. Not simply with a scare, but with that deliciously uncomfortable feeling of forgetting, for a few hours, that I actively chose to be there.