The uncanny valley of puppets gets quite spooky with Rough House Theater’s House of the Exquisite Corpse III being staged at Steppenwolf Theatre this Halloween season. This is not your average teenage jump scare haunted house, but rather a curated series of six vignettes for those who enjoy creepy terrors with a slow burn. Walking through the gloomy spaces in between, the audience encounters the ramshackle walls of homes and peeps in on the action within. This makes the spectators a part of the horror too, as we invade the privacy of the puppets without their consent while their personal dramas unfold. Pop on the headphones and you’ll have an ear on the door too, with music and sound effects to heighten the fright.
“A puppet’s neutral state is death, and its life-force is bound to the intention of the performer, and the attention of the audience. They lead us safely into the darkness,” say co-artistic directors Claire Saxe and Mike Oleon in the show program. As if we needed convincing. The proof is in the show’s haunting success. Now entering the seventh iteration of haunted puppet houses, they have hit a sweet spot, a place where Chicago’s growing puppeteering community can collaborate with set designers and sound technicians as well as other multi-disciplinary performers to spook the city with their other-worldly creations. Saxe says around 45 creators, designers and puppeteers were involved this year in making this production.
Each of the six sets and performances is inspired by some of the more macabre chapter titles of a Victorian publication titled “Our Homes and How to Make Them Healthy” by Shirley Forster Murphy. For example, “Difficulty of Proof in Some Cases of Arsenic Poisoning” features a classically frail Victorian woman coughing in bed while simultaneously succumbing to rising paranoia and her own surmise—all while a party rages outside of her bedroom. COVID-relatable FOMO, am I right? Psychological horror indeed.
Image one: Puppet by Jacky Kelsey. Puppeteers Chio Cabrera and Lucy Wirtz. Photo by Yvette Marie Dostatni. Image two: Puppet by Grace Needlman and Pablo Monterubio. Puppeteers Lindsey Ball and Max Pope. Photo by Yvette Marie Dostatni.
“Evils of Conspicuous Regular Pattern” (by Pablo Monterrubio, Grace Needlman, Lindsey Ball and Max Pope) addresses the risks of the kitchen via the dangers of invasive thoughts. An old man simply makes himself dinner, and somehow narrowly avoids mutilation—a feat we all pull off every night in our own homes if we are lucky. Cleverly embedded projection screens convey his gory thoughts. In “Danger of Rebreathed Air” by Tom Lee and Sam Lewis, there is a terrifying home invasion that disrupts and defies expectations.
For most of the vignettes, sound designer Joey Meland created the soundscapes that give you goosebumps or palpitations, depending on the scene. Meland’s sound effects layer and blend the creaks and moans, fire crackles, wind noises. Both the intimate coughs of ill puppets and/or their the crunching food consumption noises (when “Health of Children is the Measure of a Healthy Home”, by Kendall Buckingham, Kevin Michael Wesson and Felix Mayes, goes off the rails) quickly reach a terrifying din. The oscillating breathing noises, and repetitive chanting alongside a slowly exhaling puppet (“Truthfulness Vs. Sham" by Corey Smith—who did their own sound) lull us into a hypnotic state.
In a city that embraces spooky season and that never comes up short with entertainment options, House of the Exquisite Corpse has found a niche that will appeal to sophisticated horror fans as well as to date night couples and theater-goers looking for some dramatic storytelling to accompany their dread.
House of the Exquisite Corpse III has been extended until November 4 at Steppenwolf Theatre's Merle Reskin garage space, 1624 N. Halsted St. Tickets are pay what you can, with a suggested price range of $15 to $45 based on income.