Audience Participation
From the very first Vampyr Theatre performance, audience participation was encouraged. "The production has received a warm response from people in the vampire subculture who regularly attend to cheer on the vampires each time they bite someone," said J. Gordon Melton. Sokol later explained "In the early 90s I was taking a break from music and wanted to combine a Grand Guignol style theater piece with the kinds of experiences I'd have at the movies, both doing Rocky Horror (I was Frank N. Furter at a movie theater in Teaneck, N.J. from when I was 15 to 17) and at any horror movie showing at the RKO Valentine in the Bronx, people yelling at the screen, that kind of thing, except at live actors who could yell back."
The troupe also included guests from the local underground, from members of the Coney Island Side Show, for which La Commedia del Sangue participated in a 1995 benefit at Irving Plaza, to fetish performer Mistress Shane to filmmaker Rosemary Delaine. Horror video hostess Jungle Girl, was recruited for a role in "Let Us Prey" at the 1993 Fangoria Convention at Sokol's "snuff film audition."
Read more about this topic: La Commedia Del Sangue: Vampyr Theatre
Famous quotes containing the word audience:
“The audience is the most revered member of the theater. Without an audience there is no theater. Every technique learned by the actor, every curtain, every flat on the stage, every careful analysis by the director, every coordinated scene, is for the enjoyment of the audience. They are our guests, our evaluators, and the last spoke in the wheel which can then begin to roll. They make the performance meaningful.”
—Viola Spolin (b. 1911)