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
*
*
*
*
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
*
*
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.
Before proceeding I strongly urge you to read and hear the 10/20/13 seance transcript and video regarding the “Buddhist exorcism” the audience and I attempted to conduct in an effort to help “V,” the spirit of a 2-year-old toddler, escape and pass through the door to Heaven in accordance with the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
During the next show on 11/2/13 I was happy not to have heard from V, as it hopefully meant our so-called exorcism was successful and she moved forward.
Boy was I wrong. The following (and final) show on 11/3/13 left me completely floored. This is one of those good Ouija board stories. No possessed kittens, no dire warnings of doom, but a truly positive and spiritual experience. The Ouija board at its best. Read on…
Before proceeding I strongly urge you to read and hear the 10/20/13 seance transcript and video regarding the “Buddhist exorcism” the audience and I attempted to conduct in an effort to help “V,” the spirit of a 2-year-old toddler, escape and pass through the door to Heaven in accordance with the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
During the next show on 11/2/13 I was happy not to have heard from V, as it hopefully meant our so-called exorcism was successful and she moved forward.
Boy was I wrong. The following (and final) show on 11/3/13 left me completely floored. This is one of those good Ouija board stories. No possessed kittens, no dire warnings of doom, but a truly positive and spiritual experience. The Ouija board at its best. Read on… Continue reading “Boneyards EVP Log – 11/3/13”
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.
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. CONT’D>>
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>>
