MultiShow: Undercurrents & Exchange

MultiShow: Undercurrents & Exchange from Third Rail Projects on Vimeo.
This is a segment from a Brazilian TV show which focused an episode on site-specific performances in New York City. "Undercurrents & Exchange" by Zach Morris and Tom Pearson was featured as part of this program which aired in April 2009.

Undercurrents & Exchange was a month-long engagement with the employees and visitors of the World Financial Center. During February 2009, artists presented a new dance every workday during the lunch hour, unearthing the hidden, interpersonal undercurrents of our daily routines. Each short dance was a world unto itself but also accumulated meaning over the course of the month as the performances revealed the often veiled, but perpetually possible connections within the transitional spaces of the Winter Garden.

arts> World Financial Center presented Undercurrents & Exchange by Zach Morris & Tom Pearson, also featuring choreography by Marissa Nielsen-Pincus and Tara O'Con, with art installations by Zach Morris

Performed by Morris, Pearson, Nielsen-Pincus, and O'Con with Donna Ahmadi, Kris Bauman, Elizabeth Carena, Mayuna Shimizu, and other surprise guest artists.

We're Open!!!!!!!

Elizabeth Carena; photo by Darla Winn

So...The Steampunk Haunted House opened on Wednesday and the response has been overwhelmingly positive!!!

After talking to many, many tour groups that have come through, the biggest "complaint" was they wished they could've spent much, much more time to explore and look at all of the detail. People have been raving about it.

Great responses from press too!

If you haven't check out the slideshow on MSNBC

The Village Voice, Time Out New York, & New York Magazine.

We've already sold out some timeslots for tonight...so If you wanna come BUY TICKETS NOW!!

And, Finally...Halloween is in ONE DAY! if you are strapped for ideas/and or need a costume, bounce over to Halloween Adventure/NY Costumes (the nice folks who sponsored the haunted house and helped it be what it is) Amazing selection...and even some steampunky goodness! Check 'em out!

Checklist of Things That Are Scary:

A creepy, century-old building—Check.

A playhouse that is possibly already haunted—Check.

Boiler rooms—Check.

Steam pipes—Check.

Hundred-year-old pully-operated creaking metal doors—Check.

Dank cellars—Check.

Labyrinthine hallways—Check.

Victorian parlors—Check.

Twitching multi-eyed things—Check.

Gasmasks—Check.

Droves of inhuman beasties —Check.

Antiquated mechanisms—Check.

Lots and lots of darkness—Check.

Things that jump out at you in said darkness—Check.

Creepy thing in corner with teeth—Check.

Wicked-cool, eerie soundscape—Check.

Big, big men who chase you—Check.

Little tiny rooms that we lock you in—Check.

Half a Week Away

We are roughly half a week away from our opening night, and I’m thrilled at how the Haunted House is coming together. The artists and collaborators on this project have continued to floor me with their vision, talent, and penchant for creating exquisite and horrible scenarios.

photo by Chad Heird

From its inception, I wanted the Haunted House to be as dense, saturated, and startling as a bad dream. An immersive world that you can’t ever quite see the edges of. The combination downtown installation and performance artists - whose work walks that fine line between the unsettling and the sumptuous - and a team of ridiculously talented performers and collaborators has created a sprawling, fully designed experience chock-full of terrifying, stunning scenes and settings.

I am amazed at what they have done.

In rehearsals I feel like I’m in a beautiful nightmare.

Our fantastic team of collaborators includes: Nikki Berger, Elizabeth Carena, Andrea Dohar, Colleen Ehrlich, Geoffrey A. Ehrlich, Arianne Gallagher, Andres Gonzalez, Jesse Green, Kat Green, Chad Heird, Natalia Johnson, Russell Kaplan, Sara Kipp, Marissa Marshall, Dan Meltz, Zach Morris, Meiko & the Light Module, Marissa Nielsen-Pincus, Liz Sargent, Brigid C Scruggs, Debra Stunich, Ava Szilagi, Phebe Taylor, Matthew Wagner, Carlton Ward, Barry Weil, Kryssy Wright, and the utterly rockstar ensemble from Abrons Urban Youth Theater.

...stretches of desolate hallways, claustrophobic encounters with shifting forms, hidden menaces, parlors of monstrosities, gear powered mechanisms, rooms full of creeping, inhuman beings, and mobs of slowly encroaching horrors...

Dude, I'm so stoked

-Zach

The Making of the Steampunk Haunted House

(photos by Liz Sargent & Zach Morris)

Hey all! We thought we'd give you a sneak peak at the making of the Steampunk Haunted House. Following are some behind-the-scenes shots of the costuming process.

Costume Designer Colleen Ehrlich and Marissa Nielsen-Pincus laying out costumes for various sections of the House

Gloves, cuffs, hats, metal-y bits, odds and ends that were the basic elements that we started with.

...and here's an example of what that all turned into...

photo by Chad Heird

Buy Tickets Now

Trailer for Steampunk Haunted House

Steampunk Haunted House Trailer from Third Rail Projects on Vimeo.
October 28, 29, 30, 31
at the Abrons Art Center
For more info and tickets visit
thirdrailprojects.com

Steampunk Haunted House

Created by Zach Morris/Third Rail Projects

photo by Chad Heird

CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS
Enter an immersive world of churning gears, mechanical monstrosities, and steam-powered cyborgs in New York’s newest haunted house. Created by contemporary performance and installation artists, the Steampunk Haunted House sprawls throughout the Abron's century-old Playhouse for a terrifying, visually stunning experience.

Conceived and created by Bessie Award-winner Zach Morris, with Elizabeth Carena, Jesse Green, Marissa Nielsen-Pincus, Liz Sargent, Brigid C. Scruggs, Barry Weil, Kryssy Wright, and featuring members of Abrons' Urban Youth Theater

Tours run:
Wednesday, Oct 28th & Thursday, Oct 29th
6:00pm-9:30pm
Admission: $20 (Students $10)*

Friday, October 30th & Saturday, Oct 31st
8:00pm-11:30pm
Admission $25 (Students $10)*

*No one under 8 years old admitted

LOCATION:
Henry Street Settlement/Abrons Arts Center
466 Grand Street (at Pitt Street), New York, NY
Steampunk: an underground style and aesthetic that is rapidly becoming one of the most popular trends in entertainment, fashion, and culture. Steampunk offers a fresh, romanticized view on technology and fashion by making it retro, usually set in an alternate, anachronistic Victorian-era.

The Steampunk Haunted House is a distinctive, fine-art and entertainment event that puts a new spin on the idea of Haunted Houses by fashioning a lush, visually stunning, fiercely designed and choreographed experience.

Utilizing the architecture of the historic Henry Street Settlement Playhouse, the Steampunk Haunted House features a maze of dense and dizzying environments that wind through the beautiful theater, backstage, and down into the cavernous and dungeon-like basement of the turn of the century building. Groups of 6-10 people are incrementally admitted into this labrynthine environment where Zach Morris, along with fellow installation/performance artists Liz Sargent and Barry Weil terrify audiences with clockwork spiders, legions of half-man/half-machine drones, and mechanized monsters and misfits. Through eerie parlors, laboratories, boiler rooms, and navigating dark, narrow hallways, corridors, and caverns, the audience is met with startling, stunning terrors around every turn.

Like most attractions of it’s kind, this Is roughly a twenty-minute experience.