Triptych of a person in a suit inside a small, stark box, expressing distress with hands on head, shouting, and crouching, tinted with blue and red effects for a dramatic, intense mood.

Prep School: Nosferatu, a 3D Symphony of Horror

Vampires require invitation to cross a threshold into a home. There’s something both ironic and poetic about Theater in Quarantine‘s offerings, beamed out from the home of Joshua William Gelb. In the biz, we refer to the audience as “the house,” so there’s a way in which audiences are always granted access to artists’ intimate spaces, the places where art lives – the invitation implicit in the art form. If, during the pandemic, Gelb figured out a way to make this slightly more literal by repurposing his closet, the spirit of the invitation remains. Learn more.

INDEFINITE ARTICLE

Kristin Horton on Vampires in 3-D

What might two films premiering in 1922 and an eight-square-foot closet in the East Village today have in common?

A man in a suit appears trapped in a small, vertical box in three panels, each showing him in distress, reaching and covering his face. The image has a glitchy, 3D effect.

GET THEE TO THE LIBRARY

Recommended readings to get you in gear for the show.

  • Simon Bacon, Contagion and the Vampire: The Vampiric Body as Locus of Disease and Global Epidemics in the 21st Century. Palgrave Macmillan, 2023.
  • Simon Bacon, editor. Nosferatu in the 21st Century: A Critical Study. Liverpool University Press, 2022.
  • Freda Chapple & Chiel Kattenbelt, Intermediality in Theatre and Performance. Rodopi, 2006.
  • David Annwn Jones, Vampires on the Silent Screen: Cinema’s First Age of Vampires, 1897-1922. Palgrave Macmillan, 2023.
  • Marie Mulvey Roberts, Dangerous Bodies: Historicizing the Gothic Corporeal. Manchester University Press, 2016.

OFFICE HOURS

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EXTRA CREDIT

Another haunting piece of art, famously made in a bedroom – Bruce Springsteen’s 1982 Nebraska, recorded solo on a four-track in New Jersey and reflecting a dark, lo-fi depth to the Boss’s anthemic catalog. “Atlantic City” is perhaps the most famous track – with the spookiest line, “Everything dies, baby, that’s a fact… but maybe everything that dies someday comes back” – but “State Trooper” is an excellent choice for spooky Halloween listening.