“Take On Me:” Ghosted: Tales from Carson Street
City Theater presented a new Halloween storytelling tradition with multiple performances from October 24 – November 2. Written by Co-Artistic Directors Clare Drobot and Monteze Freeland.
The incandescent bulb mounted on its portable stand electrified the room with anticipation and theater history at 1300 Bingham Street, just off Carson in the South Side. Its light cast shadows on audience members as they sat or idled by cobwebbed walls, sipping their complimentary themed drinks beside eerie and grotesque portraits in antique frames. City Theater’s Gordon Lounge, the original home of the Bingham Street Methodist Episcopal Church, summoned up its former spiritualism with the setting of six church pews, glowing candles, and a few white-sheeted specters.
Lights dimmed around the theatrical ghost light as it was rolled into the center of the gathering space by actor and storyteller Farooq Al-Said. Al-Said, in collaboration with Shannon Williams, gave historical context around City Theater’s location and the presence of a mischievous spirit—a playhouse patron who’s incessant laughter got him killed by a performer in the middle of a show. We are, it feels, a group of patrons receiving information on their local non-profit organization in the form of a site-specific ghost story. With the invocation of this red-hued grinning menace, we’re asked to relocate for both our safety and pleasure, choosing one of two paths based on the question: Are you afraid of the dark?
Immersed in its regionality, Ghosted: Tales from Carson Street, which ran through Nov. 2 at City Theater, delivered a selection of site-specific tales while also asking local audiences question after question. Have you ever had a supernatural encounter? Do you know where the ATM is on said street? Have you been ghosted? Would you like a piece of candy? Ghosted isn’t a play—it’s a storytelling night developed to be an experience for people to share anecdotal comments and cocktails. To accommodate its intended audience participation, the creative team at City Theater divided the second location, Lillie Theater, into a cabaret with small circular tables fit for two and stadium seating, allowing attendees to choose their preferred seats around the small stage or at a distance. The closer to the simple raised platform one was, the more likely to receive said proffered complimentary candy from DJ and emcee Brian Siewiorek.
In Nickelodeon’s Are You Afraid of the Dark?, which aired from 1992 to 1996, every episode featured one member of The Midnight Society who would tell a scary story to the group. The narrative, rather than the storytelling, was dramatized to the television viewer. Unlike a campfire tale where the spook relies on moonlit nights and adolescent imagination or a television show’s usage of live-action, the stories in Ghosted depended on sound to provide a textural element to each story, breaking from established formats of sound design to simulate time, action, and emotion. In Al-Said’s “ghosted,” each mention of an outgoing text message was accented by a sent sound effect – a loud repetitive swoosh that carried audience members through Al-Said’s obsession and ultimate release from a cursed pair of kicks into intermission.
At the top of the second act, Siewiorek hosted a Halloween trivia contest between two volunteer audience members. The best two-out-of-three won City Theater swag, a trick-or-treat promotional strategy befitting the time of year and performance experience. In between each of the four ghost stories Siewiorek delivered dad-jokes from behind their turntable—corny comedy serving as a collective defense mechanism against the all too relatable relationship dynamics in supernatural stories revolving around love and loss.
Williams’ references to Johnny, an ex, in each of her tales, effectively blurred the line between story and "reality." The recurrent secondary characters throughout the night, from Williams’ Granny to Al-Said’s sneaker collection, along with the consistent recognition of Siewiorek’s role as part of the production team, resembled a Midnight Society gathering. But one in which the group decided against the tried and tested camping trip for the novelty and gamble of singing portions of A-ha’s “Take On Me” around a spotlight in remembrance of their dearly departed and in support of City Theater. Why? Because as Siewiorek said, “the theater is dying.”
Co-Artistic Director Monteze Freeland told me in an early interview, “it’s a little bit of something old and something new, or the past bleeding into the present.”And Freeland’s creative partner, Clare Drobot, described it as “an experiment.” When I first read the description of Ghosted I thought of roving storytelling, moving from location to location in open-air and living history museums that integrate costumed performance to recreate historical settings. But both Freeland and Drobot emphasized that this is not a simulation of the past, but a process of trying something new with artists living today. The Barbara Walter’s pitch, as Freeland coined it, was a creative journey— indicative of the human reality of all of us being “two steps away from a really big choice,” whether we realize it at the time or not.
And that’s what Ghosted is, a choice to try something different. Theater is here today, gone today. Interference or the act of intervention indicates a desire for or fear of change, whether it be in the gentrification of the neighborhoods around Carson Street or a theater questioning new effective forms of audience engagement. It also indicates a relationality between people and institutions, present or dearly departed.
Ghosted lurked in a happy afterlife of prose-based monologues and colloquial stand-up, relying upon a sense of theater as well as an assumption of Halloween activities, including candy and a rendition of Zombie-themed music by Sarah Siplak to enthrall multiple communities to come back or explore culture made in Pittsburgh. Underpinning the humorous pageantry and nostalgia was Siewiorek’s ominous statement that “the theater is dying.”
Will this year be the final nail in the coffin? No.
The exorcism at the end of Ghosted, through audience applause, is not that of the mischievous spirit that is theater as we know it, but a resounding willingness to be shocked, scared, haunted and humored by what theatermaking can be in 2024.
Ghosted featured storytellers Farooq Al-Said and Shannon Williams as well as music by Sarah Siplak and Shane McLaughlin. Brian Siewiorek is the DJ and MC. The event was designed by Emma Cummings, Alexx Jacobs, Madison Michalko, Tyler Hieb, and Tyler Parsonage, with Lauren Connolly served as stage manager.