Broadway producers traditionally gauge audience reaction by warm applause at the end of Act 1 or a standing ovation during curtain call. But “Paranormal Activity” producer Simon Friend laughs while recalling the profane reaction of a man scared for his life while watching the play: “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”
“Paranormal Activity,” which opens at the August Wilson Theatre on Aug. 14, was inspired by the 2007 thriller that made $194 million at the box office on a budget of $15,000. The story centers on James and Lou, a young couple who encounter increasingly disturbing happenings in their new home.
Make no mistake: “Paranormal Activity” is intended to be a horror movie onstage — and designed to draw a much different audience than the Great White Way is used to entertaining.
“I hope people who might not go to see plays but know the movie take a chance, that the thought of being terrified in New York City is a thrill,” says director Felix Barrett. “Hopefully get a taste for how potent and powerful live theatricality can be.” The production premiered in Leeds, England, before transferring to the West End and then playing in markets like Los Angeles, D.C. and Chicago.
Friend sees opportunity in the cultural moment, with indie upstarts like “Backrooms” and “Obsession” recently topping the box office. But Broadway is a different beast, and the real question is whether horror audiences are willing to go beyond their local multiplex in search of frights. Success on the stage hasn’t come easily: “Grey House,” from “Paranormal Activity” writer Levi Holloway, closed after three months, and slashers-turned-musicals “Evil Dead: The Musical” and “American Psycho” didn’t last long in New York City.
“It costs $15 compared to what a Broadway ticket costs,” Friend says. “They’re different things, and it does mean just by virtue of the cost of it — which is obviously related to the cost of doing it — it’s going for a slightly different market. But a movie like ‘Obsession’ is a really simple story that’s brilliantly told and wonderfully entertaining, which I hope is what we’ve got with ‘Paranormal Activity.’ That can actually reach outside of those who would consider themselves the horror audience.”
Friend initially optioned the rights from Paramount Pictures, which had eventually turned the film into a seven-chapter series, with an eighth installment on the way next year. Onstage horror has a storied history in his native England, where some of Alfred Hitchcock’s most acclaimed work was based on stage adaptations, such as “Dial M for Murder” and “Rope,” and the supernatural show “The Woman in Black” ran from 1989 to 2023. He found collaborators with Barrett, who co-created the popular, free-roaming take on “Macbeth” called “Sleep No More,” which ran for 14 years in New York City, and Holloway, whose “Grey House” ran on Broadway in 2023 and starred Laurie Metcalf and Tatiana Maslany.Early in the development phase, the trio sought the help of illusion designer Chris Fisher, a magic expert who helped bring the showstopping effects to life in “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.” Together, they hoped to create a show which would shock and scare audiences.Instead of bringing in Fisher at the end, his work was an integral part of the scriptwriting. Levi focused the story on James and Lou, newlyweds who move from Chicago to England at the top of the play. He’s a skeptic, she’s a believer, but once things start going bump in the night, tension quickly escalates. Fisher was in charge of creating said bumps. “There was a skeletal script that Levi had done,” Fisher says. “Myself, Felix and Levi sat around a table, and there were a couple of moments that Levi had written in, but then we started coming around. I always say to a writer, ‘Don’t write what you think can be done, just write what you want to do.’ Then it’s my job to try and put that onto stage. And so we just threw crazy ideas in and Levi very carefully laced those through.”
Through clever lighting, sound and visual trickery, the production forces the audience to stay alert for glimpses of ghosts or demonic happenings. The ambitious staging literally rips the fourth wall off a two-story house, giving a voyeuristic view into the kitchen, living room, bathroom and bedroom. Much of the two-hour run time is spent with eyes darting to darkened corners, checking for rogue shadows or apparitions whenever a ripple of recognition runs through another part of the audience.
In fact, the biggest difference between “Paranormal Activity” and other stage productions may be the vocal crowd, gasping or clapping at the more intricate scares. During a recent performance in Boston, there were two big moments of comic relief: At one point Travis A. Knight, who plays James, casually popped his shirt off, causing an audience member to moan loudly; later, a knock at the front door inspired someone in the orchestra section to yell, “It’s ICE!”
“We weren’t expecting it,” Barrett says. “First we thought, ‘This is a theater, and in a theater, you don’t heckle and you don’t cackle. You don’t go, “Don’t go up the stairs!”’ It’s just not the etiquette. But from preview one of this, we’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, the audience is treating this as though it’s a movie.’ The behavior is completely different. So we just lean into it and celebrate it.”
The creative team also has a big vote of confidence in horror mogul Jason Blum, who produced the original film and signed on as a producer of the play. Despite being based on a film that he says “changed the trajectory of my life,” he went to a Los Angeles performance bracing for disappointment.
“I honestly had very low expectations, not because of who was involved, not because it was ‘Paranormal Activity,’ but over many years I’ve seen many attempts at people trying to do a live stage event and make it actually scary or unnerving,” Blum says. “For a multitude of reasons, it’s just much easier to do on film. For sound and special effects reasons and the way you can force people’s eye anywhere you want by the shots that you choose in movies, you cannot do that with live stage. You can’t force people to look. The only way for a good scare is to be looking at something and then the scare comes somewhere else, and it’s very hard to do with stage. Everyone always invites me to anything that’s scary, and I’m always interested in going to see it. I love theater, I see a lot of theater, I’m on the board of The Public Theater. I’m always intrigued, and it almost never happens that it’s scary. This was actually a really satisfying, scary experience, so I decided we wanted to be more involved.”
If the team can pull off a Broadway hit with “Paranormal Activity,” they have other big ideas for horrifying audiences onstage.
“Absolutely there are other titles that we would love to do,” Barrett says. “This feels like the start of a new sub-genre of theatre where an audience can call and response and be part of it. They can be cathartically vocal in their appreciation of the horror of it all.”
Fisher says that sharing his childlike sense of wonder — about both magic and the theater — with audiences is the most wonderful part of the production.
“I started in magic when I was four, and I’ve worked in theater all my life,” he says. “To bring the two together in the last 15 years has been the best experience because I’m that younger kid all the time. I really enjoy seeing people of all ages feeling that now as well, coming out of theater and feeling energized and pumped from what they’ve seen, and they want to see more theater because of it as well.”
Below are two exclusive set renderings from scenic designer Fly Davis.