Backwards talking. This can’t be good. I’ve seen The Exorcist. Besides, infamous 1930s occultist Aleister Crowley talks about doing and saying things backwards as a way of achieving Luciferian power in his notorious book Magick in Theory and Practice (see p. 389). But the show must go on, demons be damned.
Those who live, live off the dead. Likewise death, too, has to live.
The theater, which is in no thing, but makes use of everything — gestures, sounds, words, screams, light, darkness — rediscovers itself at precisely the point where the mind requires a language to express its manifestations. To break through language in order to touch life is to create or recreate the theatre.
Seance-as-Theatre Experiment BONEYARDS Continues on 7/26 & 7/27
broadwayworld.com
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Fan #1 Dude that’s awesome! You psyched??!
July 9 at 2:01pm
Fan #2 I’ll be there!
July 9 at 2:16pm
PARANOID MORON Do you tell people it’s all an act or do you let them believe it’s really their dead loved ones ?
July 9 at 5:48pm
Jeffrey StanleyParanoid Moron — can’t act to make a Ouija board work, it’s all audience volunteers, I don’t touch it. Would that I had the power of some late 19th-early 20th century mediums to make horns blow in midair and Cherokee chiefs appear but it is what it is. Sometimes hilarious, sometimes frightening, sometimes moving, sometimes boring. It’s the only unscripted part of the show. Transcripts and EVP vids are posted online the day after. Here are the previous results if you’re curious. Go here and click on “voices from the dead.” My earliest “ghost auditions” one is my personal favorite.http://www.brain-on-fire.com/boneyards
Supernatural Skeptics Don’t Know What They’re Missing
Washington Post
October 31, 2013
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July 9 at 8:58pm
PARANOID MORON Actually there are many ways to gaff a Ouija board. The most thrilling way I’ve seen was a clear plexi glass planchette and board used by Todd Robbins in his spook show Play Dead. It gave out exact answers to two users from an audience members dead loved one. He never spilled the beans on how it worked but no good magician does and Teller was a part of this production so I bet it was beyond clever.
Todd let’s the audience know everything he performs is an act and yet people still believe he communicates with the dead. Trumpet levitation. Cold reading. Spot on details about multiple lost family members.
Guess that’s the thing about grief. Most people would give anything to hear a dead loved ones messages. Shitty when a predator comes around and preys on that vulnerability.
All the mediums of the past are frauds. Even the Fox sisters. Or should I say ESPECIALLY the fox sisters.
So I’m assuming you genuinely believe you yourself communicate with the dead ?
July 9 at 9:36pm
Jeffrey Stanley Paranoid Moron — rather than ass u me, why not read some of the links I’ve sent, especially the WaPo article? Again, I do not insist that I can communicate with the dead in my show. I DO claim that I TRY to contact the dead in front of a live audience because I am at heart a SKEPTIC who WANTS to believe, nor do I claim to personally have a special paranormal ability, and I especially don’t tell anyone they can hear from dead loved ones, nor, if you read any of the links I sent to past transcripts, has anyone ever tried to contact a dead loved one or believe they’ve heard from a dead love one in the show. I am not a medium nor am I billing myself as one. I am a playwright and a performance artist. This is documentary theatre, autobiographical storytelling, performance art, entertainment, that also involves a real live ouija board session led by the audience. As previously stated sometimes it’s exciting and sometimes it ain’t. I have no control over it. Do you see any testimonials anywhere online from anyone saying I’ve got supernatural powers or that they talked to their dead grandmother during my show? Thanks for the tips on how to trick an audience but that’s not my thing. I do however, urge you to come to the show gratis and debunk it — come sit in on my rehearsals, the setup, the show, the post-show breakdown, anything you like — although there’s nothing to debunk but have a blast.
After a highly successful world premiere in the 2013 Philly Fringe in September and an extended post-Fringe run in the fall, Jeffrey Stanley is back with Boneyards: The Wienering is back this summer 2014 and features a special guest appearance by acclaimed New York-based performance artist Michael Wiener.
Shivtei Yeshyuron-Ezras Israel Synagogue (doors open 45 minutes early to allow the audience time to wander the 3 floors of this 119-year-old storefront synagogue before descending to the cellar) 2015 S. 4th Street Philadelphia, PA 2 blocks north of Snyder Avenue
Philadelphia, PA – The ongoing seance-as-theatre experiment continues. After a highly successful run in the 2013 Philly Fringe and a post-Fringe extended run last fall, Jeffrey Stanley’s BONEYARDS is back from the dead to rock your underworld for 2 performances in late July. Come in from the heat and peacefully rest in a cool, dark, coal cellar. Same autobiographical, spooky show, same mouldering location, same real ghosts, but now featuring a visit from New York’s quirkiest experimental performance artist Michael Wiener who will be sharing the crypt with the show’s creator Jeffrey Stanley.
Shows are Saturday 7/26/14 at 9pm and Sunday 7/27/14 at 2pm. Doors open 45 minutes early to allow the audience time to wander the 3 floors of this century-old storefront synagogue before descending to the cellar.
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–from Philly’s Laurel Hill Cemetery to a British colonial era graveyard in India to ancient Greek tomb worshippers. Is there a meaning to the universe? Is the spirit world speaking to you right now through this press release? If so it should be testable, no? Thrill as Stanley points to a tombstone and researches the forgotten dead beneath it, forming connections with the deceased who rise to the surface halfway around the world in a Kolkata graveyard, and in his own Appalachian family. Shriek and shimmy as Stanley worships the dead in song. Be amazed as a live seance yields messages for audience members. Psychism? Telepathy? Subconscious ideomotor impulses? Watch, decide, leave smiling, healed and redeemed. Paranormal activity guaranteed.
A Unique Location
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. In 1909 Orthodox members of Shivtei Yeshuron-Ezras Israelbecame tenants in a former storefront on the corner of South 4th and Emily Streets (2015 S. 4th Street just two short blocks north of Snyder Avenue). In 1914 they bought the building and members of the congregation completed most of the renovations themselves. Today it is virtually unchanged. Similar to New York City’s Lower East Side Tenement Museum, the synagogue is a living memorial to turn-of-the-century immigrant life in Philadelphia. An active core group of congregants continues to hold monthly services in the synagogue, fondly nicknamed “the little shul,” and hopes to keep it alive as a religious, historical, artistic and cultural center in the neighborhood. BONEYARDS was the first ever Fringe show to take place here, and we are thrilled to still be calling it our home. More atwww.thelittleshul.org. Doors open 45 minutes early to allow the audience time to wander the 3 floors of this 119-year-old storefront synagogue before descending to the cellar.
About Writer-Performer Jeffrey Stanley
Jeffrey Stanley’s playTesla’s Letters (Samuel French, 2000) premiered to rave reviews Off Broadway in 1999 and went on to the Edinburgh Fringe and most recently a Chicago premiere. He has been a religion blogger for theWashington Postand is a film and theatre faculty at both New York University Tisch School of the Arts and at Drexel University. Other plays include the 2003 Medicine,Mancommissioned by the Mill Mountain Theatre in Virginia and most recently produced at Theatre Three Dallas, andBeautiful Zion: A Book of the Deadwhich premiered in the 2011 Philly Fringe. In the 2012 Philly Fringe he produced the hit classical Indian and Modern dance show Einstein/Tagore: Seashore of Endless Worlds. He was a 2011-12 artist-in-residence at Plays & Players Theatre. Stanley is a past president of the board of directors of the New York Neo-Futurists experimental theatre ensemble. He has been a resident of prestigious artists’ colony Yaddo, a Copeland Fellow at Amherst College, and a guest lecturer at the Imaginary Academy summer theatre and film workshop in Croatia sponsored by the Soros Foundation. He has appeared as a guest writer in The New York Times, New York Press and Time Out New York, and he was an editorial advisor to Boston University’s Center for Millennial Studies’ book on apocalypse movements The End That Does (Equinox Books, 2006). Stanley holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing and a BFA in Film & Television from NYU Tisch School of the Arts.
About Performer Michael Wiener
Special guest Michael Wiener is a New York-based film and theater actor, performer and writer. Films as an actor have won awards and press acclaim at Sundance, Tribeca, Comic Con and internationally. Commercials include a celebrated drug awareness campaign directed by Darren Aronofsky. Michael has guest starred on the Onion News Channel, IFC. His many projects with Liz Magic Laser have been seen at the Kitchen,Plays & Players Theatre for Philadelphia FringeArts, CNN, MoMA PS1, Times Square via Times Square Alliance/Franklin Furnace and as the Opening Night Film at the Armory Show. Michael is a member of St. Fortune Collective, which presented a revival of Tom Murrin’s musical Cockstrong at La MaMa; Wood Music, a site specific theater commission with director Elena Araoz at the Great Plains Theater Conference; and soon, Whiskey Jack at the NYC Fringe. This summer Michael will appear in a workshop of Sibyl Kempson’s adaptation of Ibsen’s Wild Duck directed by Sarah Benson at NYTW. Wiener’s music project The Children… is part rock opera, part environmental soundscape, a collaboration with Jim Coleman of Cop Shoot Cop and Phil Puleo of Swans. The trio composed music for director Beth B.’s burlesque documentary Exposed now in national release, and have appeared at the Ohio Theater, St. Mark’s Church, WFMU, and in fashion boutiques and rock clubs. Recently, Michael published an autobiographical essay in Jews, A Peoples’ History of New York. He also curates a performance series at the Gershwin Hotel, Dixon Place, Red Room at KGB and other spaces.
Okay so anyone who knows me or has come to my previous shows this year or back in 2011 has heard me say the phrase “Ouija action.” As in, “let’s see if we get any Ouija action tonight” or “Any Ouija action on this end of the room?” or “Last night we got a lotta Ouija action, let’s see what happens tonight.” I used this phrase in last night’s show as well. I had to laugh out loud this morning when playing back the EVP recording from last night’s show to hear a wisecracking Synagogue Saint yell out a mocking “Ouija action!” Read on.
BONEYARDS is back from the dead to rock your underworld. Four new post-Fringe shows in October just in time for Halloween. 10/17/13, 10/20, 11/2 and 11/3. Only 20 seats per show,get ‘em before they’re gone.
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American sadhu.
Okay so anyone who knows me or has come to my previous shows this year or back in 2011 has heard me say the phrase “Ouija action.” As in, “let’s see if we get any Ouija action tonight” or “Any Ouija action on this end of the room?” or “Last night we got a lot of Ouija action, let’s see what happens tonight.” In fact I used this phrase in last night’s show. I had to laugh out loud this morning when I played back last night’s EVP recording and heard a wisecracking Synagogue Saint yell out a mocking “Ouija action!” Read on…
Last night’s Ouija session didn’t have thefull-on fireworks of the previous night but still not a bad showing from the spirits (or subconscious ideomotor impulses depending on your beliefs). This is the 4th seance in the cellar and if you listen to them all you’ll see a ghostly narrative unfolding. We now know there are 12 otherworldly inhabitants of the synagogue. They don’t all hang out in the cellar. Why would they? That’s just where they come to talk with us. I call them the Synagogue Saints. We spoke to someone with initials PZ or PV, it couldn’t make up its mind. He/she was born in 06. Make that 1906. Were you ever in here when it was a store (before 1909)?NO. Were you in here when it was a synagogue?YES. Are you in the room with us now?NO. That’s a first; usually they say yes. Then where are you? A string of indecipherable consonants and then it shot down to GOODBYE, which I’ve found often happens when you start asking too many questions about their ethereal whereabouts; CAN’T TELL is also a common response. Wait! Before you go would you like to speak with us electrically? It crept back up to YES.
At that I ran across the room and fired up the P-SB7 spirit box. The EVP recording below picks up from there as we listen to PZ and company try to get their sea legs and learn how to talk through this thing — Continue reading “Boneyards EVP Log – 9/11/13”
Nice review by Paulina Reso in the City Paper. Ha, can’t argue with her about the final stage of the show. I know from past experience that when you risk opening a scripted entertainment up to chaos and randomness anything could happen — and sometimes nothing. Alas, too bad she wasn’t there for the fireworks last night but in the theatrical onslaught that is the Fringe one is lucky to be mentioned in the press at all so we’ll take what we can get and we’ll milk it for every drop. Read on…
Terrific review by Paulina Reso in the City Paper. Ha, can’t argue with her about the final stage of the show. I know from past experience that when you risk opening a scripted entertainment up to the chaos and randomness of a seance for a few minutes anything could happen — and sometimes very little. Too bad she wasn’t there for the Ouija board fireworks last night. And I’m not sure how switching from talking to singing and playing a guitar before launching directly into more talking could be construed by anyone as a water break; that would truly be a supernatural feat. This show is wall to wall mouth, baby. Read on…
Fringe review: Boneyards
By Paulina Reso
09/11/2013
WE THINK: With its penchant for the paranormal and its autobiographical focus, Jeffrey Stanley’s one-man show could come across as overly strange or egotistical, but his charisma and fascinating tales from the crypt kept it on track. Staged in a musty, 118-year-old cellar in Shivtei Yeshuron-Ezras Israel, a historic South Philly synagogue, the show began with Stanley performing George Jones’ country hit “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” which, his tender rendition revealed, is a lovelier song than I had originally thought. But we in the audience weren’t sitting in a damp cellar, squinting our light-deprived eyes at a barefooted man with a painted face to get a lesson in music appreciation. We were here for a taste of the macabre, and Stanley didn’t disappoint. CONT’D at citypaper.net>>
Terrific review by Paulina Reso in the City Paper. Ha, can’t argue with her about the final stage of the show. I know from