Shocktoberfest!! 2008: Elemental Horror

Saturday October 18 – Saturday, November 22, 2008
(Previews October 16 & 17)
Thursdays – Fridays – Saturdays at 8:00 PM

At The Hypnodrome – 575 10th Street, San Francisco

$25 General Admission
$69 Private “Shock Box” for 2
Buy Tickets Online

Fresh on the heels of Thrillpeddlers Off-Broadway debut with acclaimed revivals of The Cockettes Pearls Over Shanghai and Charles Bushs Theodora, She-Bitch of Byzantium, the world’s leading purveyor of Grand Guignol terror theatre returns to San Francisco for the companys ninth annual Shocktoberfest!!. Thrillpeddlers’ “Shocktoberfest!! 2008: Elemental Horror” is a roller coaster of one-act plays that pitilessly pit our players against the extreme elements of ice, fire and electro-magnetism and each other.

The theatrical genre of Grand Guignol, famous for its shockingly naturalistic approach to gore and taboo subject matter, originated at Le Theatre du Grand Guignol at the turn of the Twentieth Century in a desanctified chapel in Pigalle, Paris red-light district. Throughout the 1920s, copy cat Grand Guignol theatres sprang up in Europe and America offering audiences evenings that alternated steamy sex farces and bone-chilling terror plays the unmatchable thrill of the hot and cold shower theatrical experience.

Its Men against the wilderness! (and it looks like the wilderness is winning) in the premiere production of “A Difficult Passage” by Rob Keefe. A privileged pair of Yale grads, Bush and Prescott, strike out to face the icy perils of the Klondike en route to their fathers silver mines with an unwilling whore in tow. Theyve fallen in a hole, devoured their sled dogs, and with few resources are now forced to brave sub-zero elements and the questionable machinations of the Canadian Mountie they hope will rescue them. Thrillpeddlers director Russell Blackwood also helms the long awaited revival of Keefe’s “A Slight Tingling,” an outrageous electro-magnetic comedy (suggested by the 1907 Grand Guignol play Les Operations du professor Verdier) that skewers the hubris of surgeons and scientists alike.

Beijing is burning and yellow-faced rebels are poised to storm the French Embassy in Jonathan Hortons The Kindest Thing, a new adaptation of the 1904 Grand Guignol classic La Derniere Torture. In a premise plucked from the headlines, the final moments of Chinas anti-imperialist upraising known as the Boxer Rebellion are played out on the Hypnodrome stage in graphic detail and heartrending pathos. Thrillpeddlers signature lights out spookshow finale, also created by Horton, will bring goose bumps to a head in Shocktoberfest!! 2008s hair-raising climax.

Pairs of patrons will surely enjoy Hypnodromes Shock Box seats for two, which garnered SF Weeklys Best of San Francisco 2008 for Best Bonus Theater Experience. These themed seats include sumptuous Turkish Lounges, as well as private boxes including Heaven and Hell, The Pharaohs Tomb, and Padded Cell, which offer the same opportunity for illicit trysting that was once a feature of the Parisian Thtre du Grand Guignolwith added special effects as a nod to the 1950s horror movie gimmicks of William Castle.