This is what you turn into when you "grow up Southern gothic" next door to a rural Appalachian funeral home. Murders. Suicides. Embalmings. Divorces. Hauntings. Hilarity ensues.
A funeral for the living. A coming-of-age embalming. A suicidal decapitation by coal train. A cross-dressing hillbilly named Doodlebug. This autobiographical, metatheatrical, taphophilic, musical monologue resurrects and converses with the cadaverous--from rural southwestern Virginia to Philly’s Laurel Hill Cemetery to a British colonial era graveyard in India to ancient Greek tomb worshippers. Each show concludes with a real, audience-led seance featuring an antique Ouija board and electronic "ghost box" for hearing voices of the dead. Paranormal activity guaranteed.
Jeffrey Stanley's BONEYARDS premiered in the 2013 Philly Fringe and has been running ever since, usually at its home base in the coal cellar of the 120-year-old Shivtei Yeshuron-Ezras Israel Synagogue, aka The Little Shul, in South Philly. In February, 2015 it received its New York premiere at the Morbid Anatomy Museum in Brooklyn. The macabre collection is known for its lecture series but this theatrical event was a first.
During the June, 2015 Solow Festival in Philadelphia, come in from the heat and peacefully rest in the cool, dark, parlor of the Art Church of West Philadelphia, formerly a private residence built in 1925. The performances are part of the Body Horror Mini-Fest including solo shows from performance artists Joy Cutler and Joseph Ahmed, produced by Cara Blouin.
Same autobiographical, darkly comic show, new mouldering location, all new ghosts.
