n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

St. Ann's Warehouse, NY

2006

Les Freres Corbusier

-

-

I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page

50 min

One Act

-

-

-

-

This is the Les Freres Corbusier production of Hell House, with text provided by Pastor Keenan Roberts. The following information is from the press release: Hell House is "a nearly exact re-creation of the thousands of hell houses staged by Christian Evangelicals in communities across America during the Halloween season. First staged by Jerry Falwell in the 1970s, hell houses take a traditional haunted house's ghosts and ghouls and substitute teenage cheerleaders getting abortions, gay men dying of AIDS, and children reading Harry Potter and then being damned to hell. A multi-room theatrical experience that is part installation art, part play, and part haunted house, Les Freres Corbusier's Hell House transforms St. Ann's 14,000 square feet of raw space and seating risers into a dozen 'rooms' of performance featuring a company of nearly 100 actors, designers, and technicians. The production ends in a giant Evangelical rock hoedown, replete with white powdered donuts and a lively game of 'Pin the Sin on Jesus'. The Les Freres production marks the first time that a hell house will be seen in the New York area. "Hell houses bear many similarities to medieval pageant plays, but the contemporary form first appeared in the late 1970s, authored by Falwell. In 1993, Pastor Roberts staged the first hell house of his own. In 1996 he began to sell Hell House Outreach" kits to other churches. These kits include a 263-page manual, covering everything from casting to publicity to instructions for making a prop fetus out of hamburger meat. "Roberts explains, 'Hell houses communicate the biblical truth that sin always has consequences. We believe that abortion, adultery, homosexuality, among other things are sinful behaviors and that if a person does not repent of their sin and come to Jesus Christ then hell will be their destiny rather than heaven'. "The Les Freres Corbusier production of Hell House is presented strictly according to guidelines of the Hell House Outreach" kits distributed by Pastor Roberts. "'While a hell house is a foreign world to the secular liberals on America's coasts, it is the Evangelicals' sincere response to what they see as a daily assault on their basic values and the production hopes to address the lack of communication between two sizable populations in America, which finds practical expression in everything from Wal-Mart's product selection to the results of national elections,' says Les Freres Corbusier Executive Director Aaron Lemon-Strauss."
nytheatre.com