Oh, The Glamourous Life!

Dear Constant Reader,

The Wrathskellar reopens for business tonight and every night through Halloween!

We’ve added a few more tantalizing artifacts and ephemera to the show and another act entirely. And delightful cocktails to supplement the treats in the bar.
(click for a more readable version)

We’ve been getting so great reviews, like:

“This was amazing. It was beautiful and haunting and intriguing. I, seriously, lost track of time and wish I had more time in the show. Go early if you can is my advice. There’s so much to see.”

“…this is the best burlesque I have seen in Boston. The performers are engaged, clearly having fun, professional, and entertaining.”

“Just went and saw this show today! It was awesome. Get tickets and go if you can. Share around otherwise, let’s get word out. Burlesque haunted experiences for all!”

“I was expecting a “Sleep No More”-like immersive theater experience, and it absolutely delivered. However, I was not expecting it to be so quietly disturbing.”

We’ve added one more show on November 5th (remember, remember…). It will be the last chance to see Wrathskellar Tales in this setting. Ever. Really.

If you’re intrigued by what went into creating this unique and complex show (and want to know all the secrets), please join us for Inside “Wrathskellar Tales” on November 4th. Guests will get a guided tour of the installation and participate in a Q&A with the cast. And then you’ll have one last chance to see the show the next night.

Last night we filmed the acts for posterity. In November the performance spaces cease to exist and will never return, and many of the acts cannot be performed outside of this setting.

Here’s The Diva in her Boudior preparing to bathe as her Maid looks on anxiously.
(photo by Susanna)

Dear Constant Reader,

I didn’t expect to be writing to you for I didn’t think there would be anything noteworthy. I hoped the show last night would be uneventful. Today I expected to be recovering from weeks of hard work by sleeping in, relaxing, and perhaps taking care of some of the little things that have been falling by the wayside during the Wrathskellar build.

Last night things were completely uneventful, for me anyway, until half an hour before the end of the show. I went into my dressing room to discover that Pearl was helping one of the maids (aka stage hands) pick out pasties. This is how I discovered that Brigitte had had a family emergency* and left early in the show. Other cast members had been filing in during her numbers as best they could all night. I had been so involved in my own thing that I never realized. Honestly, I’m glad I didn’t know until so late in the show, which reduced the freaking out, but gave me enough time to prepare myself for the finale being short a person.

That over with, I was looking forward to greeting some folks I knew in the bar and then going home for some cat snuggling and greatly-needed sleep.

That’s when Scratch told me the streets were flooded. We were in a basement. There was water pouring into the kitchen area. Like, broken pipe levels of water.

After cutting the bar entertainments short and sending the patrons on their way, the cast and crew mobilized. We frantically began moving everything out of the kitchen area, but the water kept coming. The water filled the bar and started running down the left-hand hallway into the performance space. We started clearing set dressing as fast as possible from the path of the water. The water kept coming. Running into The Sewing Room, then The Lost Girl’s Garret, into the Left Luggage Office. It started pouring into the back dressing room, and into The Contessa’s Seraglio.

Contrast this picture with the one from opening night.

Thanks to herculean effort from everyone, cast, crew, staff, and a couple of volunteers, we got everything, including the draperies that create the spaces, up off the floor. We had a ton of electronics that needed to be moved to safety. I don’t know how, but even the piano got moved out of the flood area and up onto blocks.

After everything was safe, the water removal kicked into high gear. Most of the cast was released at this point. Heroic effort was made by those who remained: Scratch, Hunter, Mr. Cleave (one of the performers in the bar), Marek (a frequent volunteer) & his dad, Matt (our occasional trumpet player) who had just come to enjoy the show, and Betty. I am so grateful to all of them for their hard work.

We had an industrial shop-vac and the water was deep enough in some places that it could be bailed with improvised buckets. Scratch uncovered what we hoped was a drain, but turned out to be an old sump pit. Marek drove Betty to her house to get her sump pump (I miss the days when Home Depot was open 24 hours…), which Hunter got up and running.

Around 1:30am when Scratch, Hunter, Betty, and I called it quits, the water was noticeably lower.

I’m told that there’s a plumbing crew in there now, doing arcane flood prevention and water draining things. In a few hours we’ll go over, assess the damage, and hopefully clean up, wash the floors, repaint where necessary, and reset all the spaces.

You know what they say about the show going on…

* She’s fine. Everybody involved is fine. She’ll be back tonight.

Dear Constant Reader,

We opened Wrathskellar Tales last night. I’m beyond exhausted and not even sure where to begin. Forgive me if I ramble.

It’s not a traditional burlesque show. We (and by we, I mean mostly Scratch and a very small crew) turned the space that will be The Thalia, a long-neglected basement, into “backstage” at The Wrathskellar. This was a massive build, bigger than anything we’d ever done before, and a lot of things couldn’t really be stage-faked, since the guests can explore and rummage through things. Besides the performances space, we also needed to redo the bathroom (it was so gross), create a box office, a coat check, a bar/kitchen/music hall area, and get a piano down the stairs.

This has been so time consuming. Most of the cast put in long days and/or evenings doing whatever we could, often when we were supposed to be rehearsing. I know it was making Scratch crazy (“A performer’s job is to perform!”), but he couldn’t turn down the help.

Instead of a linear show with acts that appear on stage one-by-one with props and set pieces being moved around, we have a number of performance areas, each of which has to be dressed appropriately. And we need to salt the place with interesting tidbits to intrigue the guests. I’m really grateful to the skilled artists who helped make the place beautiful (for some sense of beautiful) as well as the cast who took initiative in creating the decor for their spaces.

Just to give you an idea, here’s Betty as The Contessa lounging in her Seraglio.

I’d say we were about 90% ready when we opened last night. There are a bunch of things we wanted to happen that got shelved for now. Don’t worry — we’ll be putting them in as we go. Because the build went so long and there were so many complications, we only got to try out the tech on Wednesday and last night was the first time with audience. When you’re doing an interactive show, it doesn’t matter how much you rehearse and try to prepare, everything changes when you bring in the people. There was a fair bit of winging it.

The biggest issues I was aware of last night were definitely audio. Every space has its individual soundscape and audio gear. We synchronize our watches and all hit “play” at the same time. There’s no way to run the music in a centralized way (not on our budget). Personally, I had several problems in my Boudoir. Thank goodness Hunter was around to fix my speakers early on, but there was nothing that could be done when my player froze, other than reboot it (I don’t know how long that took, but it felt like years). But that pales in comparison to Devora, who had no working sound in either of her performance areas. Because she’s just that good, she ran her numbers in silence.

I have every confidence that these kinks will all get ironed out post-haste.

The best part of last night for me was finally performing with my bathtub! I’ve been working on this act for more than a year — getting the tub in performance condition took longer than choreographing. Scratch has been a huge help in making this dream of mine come true. Not only has he lent his tech expertise and skills, he kept encouraging me, even when it was too overwhelming.

No pictures of me yet, so if you want to see me in my Catherine D’Lish and Glorious Pasties splendor, you’ll need to see the show.

We’ve got three more performances this week and five next week. Please join us for burlesque, creepiness, great food, live music, mysteries, magic, and more atmosphere than you can handle. Tickets are available at wrathskellar.com. There are a limited number of tickets per entrance time, so don’t wait.

Down we go!