Supernatural Skeptics Don’t Know What They’re Missing

“I try contacting the spirit world before live audiences to keep an element of hope simmering on the back burner of my mind.”- playwright and performance artist Jeffrey Stanley

On Faith

Supernatural Skeptics Don’t Know What They’re Missing
by Jeffrey Stanley

These ghosts are primed and ready to provide a ghoulish Halloween on the 500 block of Summit Ave in Jenkintown.

I like Ouija boards. I’ve used them since I was a teenager. More recently I’ve messed around with electric spirit boxes, also known as Frank’s boxes after their inventor Frank Sumption. They’re radio receivers which allow you to listen to and record voices of the dead, also known as EVPs (Electronic Voice Phenomena) or Raudive voices, after one of their early discoverers. Over the past two years I have frequently used Ouija boards and spirit boxes in my performance art, attempting to conjure up the dead as my co-stars before a live audience. At one of the universities where I teach playwriting and screenwriting part-time I am also the faculty adviser for a student-led paranormal investigation club. Friends and fans assume I am a true believer but the truth is that I am not. I am a healthy skeptic. And that’s depressing for me because it means that on some level I feel certain there’s nothing out there. I try contacting the spirit world before live audiences to keep an element of hope simmering on the back burner of my mind.

Given the many millions of religious folks in the world (surveys tell us time and again that the vast majority of us believe in an afterlife) I am not alone in my desire for proof of a promise made long ago. I don’t want to be told it by a clergyman or a book or a website. I want to see it. Because of the world’s overwhelming belief in an afterlife I am always amazed at the number of people who are absolutely petrified of Ouija boards. Shouldn’t we be elated when the pointer, properly called a planchette, moves and spells out things? Shouldn’t we jump for joy when a spirit box calls out to us? Instead we flee in terror at the most innocuous of communications. I’m reminded of my good friend Steve who received a strict Catholic upbringing. Once as a teenager he played around with a Ouija board and it spelled out his dog’s name: HOBO. He ran shrieking from the room,

Boneyards Final Shows This Weekend

Come wake the dead. Jeffrey Staney’s BONEYARDS returns for 2 final shows this Saturday and Sunday 11/2 and 11/3. Meanwhile please enjoy Stanley’s latest religion article in today’s Washington Post about my experiences contacting the dead as performance art over the past few years.

Come wake the dead. BONEYARDS returns for 2 final shows this Saturday and Sunday 11/2 and 11/3 in Philadelphia. Times and tickets.

Meanwhile please enjoy my latest article in today’s Washington Post about my theatrical experiments in contacting the dead as performance art over the past two years. Thank you for your support and patronage, and Happy Halloween.

October 31, 2013

On Faith
Supernatural Skeptics Don’t Know What They’re Missing
by Jeffrey Stanley

I try contacting the spirit world before live audiences to keep an element of hope simmering on the back burner of my mind.

And also out today from Drexel University a story about the PIG of which I’m the proud faculty adviser…

Drexel Paranormal Investigators Haunted by the Unknown
by Alissa Falcone
…It doesn’t hurt that the group’s faculty adviser also has an interest with the undead: By day, Jeffrey Stanley teaches classes in the Westphal College of Media Arts & Design’s Screenwriting and Playwriting Department, but at night he transforms into undead residents of cemeteries from all over the world during “Boneyards,” his performance that imagines supernatural comic monologues.CONT’D at drexel.edu>>

THE TALKING DEADS in Philly

Performance dates are 10/17, 10/20, 11/2 and 11/3. Thanks so much for your consideration and for supporting independent theatre in Philly.

Boneyards Reopens 10/17/13

Press Contact: info@shiva3.com

10/14/13 – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Philadelphia, PA –A real seance with real ghosts. But we don’t need to tell you that, you’ve already seen it. There are lots of Halloween events being promoted right now, especially of the big budget “haunted” house/prison/hayride/forest/valley variety with a cast of dozens of monsters/zombies/vampires/murder victims and we love those and patronize them as much as the next guy and gal every year, but why not consider something different for you or your friends eager to freak themselves out while also being profoundly moved on a spooky October night?

Jeffrey Stanley performs death ballads “He Stopped Loving Her Today” by George Jones, “Louis Collins” by Mississippi John Hurt and his own original “American Sadhu” in BONEYARDS.

Transcripts and videos from previous shows are online for you and your colleagues’ perusal. We recommend you start here . You might also want to check out the first EVP recording made in the 118-year-old synagogue that is the show’s location when New York City playwright and Drexel University Performing Arts faculty Jeffrey Stanley held the world’s first ghost auditions. Stanley, who often writes about religion for the Washington Post, will be discussing seance as performance art in that publication later this month.

Performance dates are 10/17, 10/20, 11/2 and 11/3. Thanks for your consideration and for supporting independent theatre in Philly.

Thine,
Your friends at Shiva3 Productions

Boneyards is Back for 4: 10/17, 10/20, 11/2, 11/3

Philadelphia, PA – The ongoing seance-as-theatre experiment continues. After a successful run in the 2013 Philly Fringe BONEYARDS is back from the dead to rock your underworld just in time for Halloween. Same autobiographical, spooky show, same mouldering location, same real ghosts. 4 dates: 10/17, 10/20, 11/2 and 11/3. Tickets $10, seating is limited to 20.

Later this month Jeffrey Stanley discusses seance as performance art in the Washington Post. Stay tuned.

Press Contact: info@shiva3.com

10/7/13 – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Philadelphia, PA – The ongoing seance-as-theatre experiment continues. After a successful run in the 2013 Philly Fringe BONEYARDS is back from the dead to rock your underworld just in time for Halloween. Same autobiographical, spooky show, same mouldering location, same real ghosts. 4 dates: 10/17, 10/20, 11/2 and 11/3. Tickets $10, seating is limited to 20.

The hilarious, eloquent and haunting follow-up to Stanley’s 2011 hit “Beautiful Zion: A Book of the Dead,” this true to life romp resurrects the cadaverous–from Philly’s Laurel Hill Cemetery to a British colonial graveyard in India to ancient Greek tomb worshippers. Paranormal activity guaranteed.

Times, tickets, photos, press, playbill, and real voices from the dead here.

About Your Destination
Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe and beyond crowded South Philadelphia in the 1880s. They pushed south from the original “Jewish Quarter” near South Street, opening Jewish schools, hospitals and some 140 synagogues along the way. Hard to believe today, eh? In 1909 Continue reading “Boneyards is Back for 4: 10/17, 10/20, 11/2, 11/3”

BONEYARDS: Unfringed

BONEYARDS is back from the dead to rock your underworld just in time for Halloween. Shiva3 is proud to announce the return of Jeffrey Stanley’s solo show BONEYARDS which was a hit in the 2013 Philly Fringe. The 80-minute show will again be performed in the dark, dank coal cellar of the century-old storefront Shivtei Yeshuron Ezras-Israel Synagogue, also known as “the little shul” (part of the June 2013 Hidden City Festival) at 2015 South 4th Street in South Philly near Snyder Avenue for 4 performances.

BONEYARDS is back from the dead to rock your underworld just in time for Halloween. Shiva3 is proud to announce the return of Jeffrey Stanley’s solo show BONEYARDS which was a hit in the 2013 Philly Fringe. The 80-minute show will again be performed in the dark, dank coal cellar of the century-old storefront Shivtei Yeshuron Ezras-Israel Synagogue, also known as “the little shul” (part of the June 2013 Hidden City Festival) at 2015 South 4th Street in South Philly near Snyder Avenue for 4 performances. Stanley’s solo show is a followup to his 2011 Fringe hit BEAUTIFUL ZION: A BOOK OF THE DEAD. Stanley is also a dramatic writing faculty at New York University Tisch School of the Arts and at Drexel University Westphal College of Media Arts & Design. He is a religion blogger for the Washington Post.

About the Show
A funeral for the living. A coming-of-age embalming. A suicidal decapitation by coal train. A cross-dressing hillbilly named Doodlebug. This metatheatrical, taphophilic, true-to-life monologue resurrects and converses with the cadaverous– Continue reading “BONEYARDS: Unfringed”