Last night’s performance of Beautiful Zion: A Book of the Dead went well. The audience was small so I could bring the action to even closer proximity to them, making the show as intimate as possible.

A Facebook message from one of the Ouija volunteers today sez, “Another night, another great Fringe show. Beautiful Zion: Book of the Dead. Funny, emotional, brave, spooky – what more can you ask for?” And as for the entity we contacted on the Ouija board, “I’m curious to know what kind of being it was, if it wasn’t human…” (see below).

A message today from the 2nd Ouija volunteer sed, “Congrats on the success.  It was the most entertaining and compelling one man show we’ve seen in a very long time.  You created a real event, and it was such an experience. I’m going to cite it to my [undergrad theatre] students in class tomorrow morning. The Ouija board thing did freak me out a bit. ‘Shalee’ meant something to me, as hard as I’m trying not to apply overly convenient  interpretations.”

Shalee? Not human? What in Hell are they talking about?  Here’s their Ouija transcript:

QUESTIONER: What is your name?

(the planchette was moving extremely slowly; we tried switching in a new volunteer but there was still a lot of static on the lines; in the interest of time I began jokingly hurrying the spirit along — “okay, pick it up, we’ve got a show to do,” etc. –  and it seemed to respond by talking in shorthand)

SPIRIT (or subconscious ideomotor impulse depending on your beliefs): SHALEE

JEFF:  Okay, that’s definitely not who we’re looking for.

QUESTIONER (to Jeff): Sorry.

JEFF:  No worries.  Keep talking to Shalee.

QUESTIONER (to Shalee):  Unusual name. Are you human?

JEFF: It’s creeping toward NO, definitely not YES, so let’s take that as a NO or we’ll be here all night.

QUESTIONER:  What are you?

SPIRIT: DK (then it comes to a full stop)

QUESTIONER: DK?

JEFF:  Short for DON’T KNOW.

(the planchette starts moving pointedly toward YES)

JEFF: Okay, so Shalee doesn’t know whether he/she is human. We’d love to know more but we’ve gotta wrap this up. Perhaps we can speak with you more later. Last question: do you know what’s taped to back of the grave photo hanging in the Blue Grotto?

SPIRIT: NO

JEFF: Big round of applause for Shalee! You may return to your seats.

BTW a quick Google search this morning showed that Shalee as a girl’s name is a variant of the South Asian name Shaila (Hindi), and the meaning of Shalee is “river”.   However, I then received the above message from the Ouija volunteer saying the name had a personal resonance for him but he didn’t elaborate.  Perhaps that person will come forward with more info later.

This Ouija session overall  was very different than the previous evening’s but I still didn’t get what I came for, so I had to again end the show with the nuclear option.  Come tonight and find out what that means.   Full details and ticket info. And don’t forget it’s FREEMASONRY FRIDAY.  The first three ticket holders to discretely show Jeff their Masonic rings or other authentic Masonic logo jewelry in secret before the show will secretly be given a $10.00 Starbucks gift certificate. Don’t try to pull a fast one — I know my Masonic jewelry.

My 1917 original William Fuld Ouija Board (pre-Parker Bros.) is an integral part of the show.

Last night’s premiere performance of Beautiful Zion: A Book of the Dead went extremely well but rather than give you a blow by blow of how I think I performed or how I worked the incredibly drunk and disorderly audience member right into the show’s primary theme by getting him drunker with a strong Svedka martini, I’ll cut to the chase and tell you what you really want to know:  did the 3 audience volunteers contact anyone cool on the Ouija Board in the Blue Grotto’s Entrance to Hell room at the show’s climax?

Here is a transcript of their session:

QUESTIONER: What is your name?

SPIRIT (or subconscious ideomotor impulse depending on your beliefs): FRA

QUESTIONER: Are those your initials?

SPIRIT: YES

JEFF:  Okay, that’s definitely not who we’re looking for but why don’t you chat with them anyway.

QUESTIONER: Do you know that you’re part of a show?

SPIRIT: YES

QUESTIONER: Any advice for Jeff for his show?

SPIRIT: MORE JAM

(note: there is music in my show, so I guess FRA wanted more of it;  or they wanted more jelly)

QUESTIONER: Do you live in the CEC building?

SPIRIT: YES

QUESTIONER: Are you human?

SPIRIT: YES

QUESTIONER:  What year did you die?

(no answer, the planchette just wandered; a common response for earthbound spirits who don’t realize yet that they’re dead–or don’t want to realize it)

QUESTIONER: Okay, then when were you born?

SPIRIT:  1873

QUESTIONER:  Any advice for us about how to live, how to die, or how to navigate the afterlife?

SPIRIT: LALALALA

(?! no idea; we were stumped by this one; maybe FRA was putting its fingers in its ears and singing so that it couldn’t hear our question? maybe it was telling us just to sing our way through it (it did ask for “more jam” after all). Or maybe it was telling us to go to LA)

QUESTIONER: Are you in the room with us?

SPIRIT: YES

QUESTIONER:  Do you know what’s taped to back of Jeff’s relative’s grave photo hanging in the Blue Grotto?

SPIRIT: NO

Well, the Ouija session was fun but I still didn’t get what I came for, so I had to end the show with the nuclear option.  Come tonight and find out what that means.  Full details and ticket info.

Holly Maddux's fading picture on the wall of the Blue Grotto.

The entertainment and culture editor at philly2philly.com saw my recent blog posting about “unicorn killer” Ira Einhorn and his victim Holly Maddux immortalized in art and botany at the CEC and asked to rerun it in their Philly Buzz section. Nice of them to do so, hope you enjoy it.  See you at the show.

BEAUTIFUL ZION: A Book of the Dead opens tonight, 9/7/11, at the Blue Grotto.  Full details and ticket info.

Photo by Iggy Rocketboy.

If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow, don’t be alarmed now. It’s just a spring clean for the May queen.  Beautiful Zion: A Book of the Dead opens this Wednesday 9/7 and it’s Wiccan Wednesday. The first 3 ticket holders to take me aside pre-show, proclaim themselves Wiccans and prove it by showing me their sage wands will receive a $10.00 Starbucks gift certificate.  I’m crazy, people.

How crazy am I?  Other prizes will be given out randomly at each performance, including a free inept dream interpretation session by me, and, if you believe your home is haunted, a free in-home ouija board session with me. I am a magnet for ghosts, angels and demons so if they’re there I’ll be able to chat them up. DISCLAIMER: please note that I am not an exorcist. Spirits may remain in your home and may become pissed. Objects may spontaneously catch fire and pets may become temporarily possessed.

Your stairway to heaven lies on the whispering wind.

Your stairway downstairs to my show in the Blue Grotto lies at 3500 Lancaster Avenue. Full details here.

At the Fringe Festival, there are edgy venues that grip an audience

by Molly Eichel

“ONE OF THE most exciting aspects of the Fringe Festival — the unjuried, anything-goes companion to the Live Arts Festival — is when it draws audiences to places they’ve never been before and might never have a chance to go again, whether it’s a room in an unknown mansion or in the depths of a possibly haunted grotto.

The Blue Grotto

After the demise of a close relative who drank himself to death, Jeffrey Stanley became obsessed with communicating with the dead through Ouija boards.

Beautiful Zion: A Book of the Dead is a “real dark comedy” about the years he spent trying to talk to the other side. But how could all that eeriness (and humor) be conveyed in a traditional theater space? So the New York expat looked for a stage appropriate for the macabre elements of his decidedly funny show. He found the Blue Grotto in West Philly’s Community Education Center. It’s decked out in thousands of blue lights on light fixtures by artist Randy Dalton. Stanley equates it to a mad scientist’s laboratory. ‘It’s visually stunning, it’s creepy as hell, it’s in the cellar of an old building and it might be haunted,’ Stanley said, ticking off the reasons that the Blue Grotto is perfect for his piece.”

The Blue Grotto at the Community Education Center, 3500 Lancaster Ave., 8 p.m. Sept. 7-17, $20.”  Tickets and more info here.

Philly Daily News article cont’d HERE->>

The Caged Unicorn. Detail from the Blue Grotto.

Lest you think this post-modern sculptural detail at left — one of many small treasures from the Blue Grotto in the CEC cellar — is merely a slapdash piece of whimsy made up of two found objects, allow me to explain its meaning as told to me directly by the artist, Randy Dalton. There is a reason that it’s become a part of my show.

The Caged Unicorn was created about a decade ago to symbolize the extradition, conviction and life imprisonment of “the unicorn killer,”  CEC neighbor Ira Einhorn (his surname meaning literally one horn, “the unicorn” was Einhorn’s nickname).  Einhorn was a pal of ’60s radicals Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin and involved with the first Earth Day celebrations in 1970.  He also counted rock star Peter Gabriel among his friends and was sometimes paid well by socialites for serving as their New Age guru. Ira went on to murder his girlfriend, a young ballerina and privileged graduate of Bryn Mawr College named Holly Maddux, in 1977.  The cold-blooded killing happened around the corner from the CEC in Ira’s home at 3411 Race Street.

Ira was a fixture in West Philadelphia, a charismatic and eccentric celebrity, community activist and nearby UPenn graduate who was no stranger to the CEC staff of artists and activists, some of whom also knew and admired Holly.  Despite Ira’s pose as a hippie and supporter of love and nonviolence, he was known locally to be a physically abusive womanizer.  When Holly tried to break up with Ira he killed her, stuffed her body in a trunk and hid it in his closet.  18 months later in 1979 police found her body there and arrested Ira, who didn’t seem surprised they found it but refused to admit guilt, instead shrugging it off and telling officers, “you found what you found.”

“The unicorn killer,” as the media dubbed him, had his bail reduced thanks to his clever defense lawyer, future US Senator Arlen Specter.  One of Ira’s wealthy friends paid the bail and he promptly fled to Europe before the murder trial began, perhaps also with the help of wealthy friends.

Ira Einhorn. This fading photo in the Blue Grotto used to hang outside the CEC. "The male holly on the left represents Ira Einhorn, who fled the country before he could be tried for Holly's murder. He is currently living in France. Hopefully he will be extradited for trial, in the meantime this plant stands in his stead. Ira Einhorn should be in jail!"

Ira was tried and convicted while living the good life in Europe under an assumed name and with a new Swedish wife.  16 years later in the early 1990s he was finally found in France and arrested.  However France, which has  no death penalty, refused to extradite him to Pennsylvania, a frying state, as part of its international human rights policy.  With some legal hoop-jumping, prosecutors in Pennsylvania were able to guarantee the French government that if found guilty Einhorn would not be executed.  In the end he was tried in absentia, found guilty and sentenced to life without parole.  Still, France delayed 8 more years before finally extraditing him, and only after feeling certain he would get a fair retrial.  Einhorn was given a new trial, again found guilty, and finally began serving his life sentence in Pennsylvania in 2002.

Coincidentally, around the same time Holly  went missing in the late 1970s someone donated two holly trees to the CEC which Randy Dalton planted on the grounds.

The Holly holly tree at right.

They were a  male and female tree (both are required in order to produce berries).  The staff named the female holly tree Holly in honor of the missing Holly Maddux, making it a living vigil on public display in a show of local support for the victim.  When Einhorn was arrested  they celebrated, ceremonially wrapping the male tree loosely in barbed wire, symbolically “imprisoning” Einhorn.  By the time of Einhorn’s extradition in 2001 the male tree had caught a disease and died, and a joyful ceremony was held to uproot the tree and discard it. “Holly” has continued to thrive on the CEC grounds to this day.

An old photo of Holly Maddux hangs on the wall of the Blue Grotto near the Caged Unicorn.  Today there is also a memorial Myspace page in honor of Holly.  Ira’s grisly act was covered in detail in the New York Times and Time magazine and was covered in depth on TruTV.  (Another website provides gruesome crime scene photos of Holly’s decaying corpse in Ira’s trunk, to which I won’t bother providing a link.)

Although neither the CEC nor its staff were directly involved with the case, their physical, social and emotional proximity to the events left its mark on their psyches and even crept into the Blue Grotto, which is perhaps blue for more than one reason.

The more I get to know the joint the more it seems an appropriate match for the darkness and light traversed in Beautiful Zion: A Book of the Dead.  Tickets are available here. The show closes 9/17/11.

[Photos via me. Note that I have not thoroughly researched the above narrative and that it's largely hearsay; if you have corrections or further details please post them below.]

Randy Dalton is the Community Education Center (CEC)’s long time artist-in-residence and the creator of the Blue Grotto permanent art installation in the CEC cellar. The CEC is a non-profit, community-based arts and education center housed in an 1837 former Quaker meeting house and school in West Philadelphia.  The CEC’s mission is to strengthen the sense of shared community and values among peoples of differing backgrounds and cultures through the arts.  The Meeting House Theatre on the 2^nd floor is its mainstage and primary performance space.  Dance studios and rehearsal spaces on the 1^st floor and are available for rental.  The CEC recently received a $50,000 community development grant from Maxwell House to make improvements to the historically significant building.  While it was still a functioning Quaker school in the 1920s actor Kevin Bacon’s father Ed was a student here. It was sold to Drexel University in the 1940s and was their main theatre for awhile before becoming the Community Education Center in the 1970s, during which time Kevin Bacon’s mother Ruth was a teacher and community activist there.

Therefore, you should come and see Beautiful Zion: A Book of the Dead opening 9/7 in the Blue Grotto for only 8 performances. Tickets to this otherworldly Philly Fringe event are onsale now.  I bet Kevin Bacon would like it. I bet you will like it.

[image via wikipedia]

[reposted from philly.com]

by Howard Shapiro

“The actors are setting up shop, as are the dancers, comics, acrobats, clowns, musicians, and uncategorizable others — some from around America, others from across the sea, many from zip codes all over the area.  Every Philadelphia performance space is taken — as well as spaces not normally used for performance…It’s all in preparation for one of the nation’s powerhouse arts festivals…The Live Arts Festival/Philly Fringe — 16 days and nights of sometimes experimental and risky, sometimes outré and bizarre, and frequently striking work — opens Friday…For all its constant growth in audience-building, fund-raising, and mentoring performers, Live Arts/Philly Fringe – now a $2.6 million annual operation known to just about everybody as, simply, the Fringe…”  CONT’D AT PHILLY.COM>>

Tickets are onsale now for Beautiful Zion: A Book of the Dead.

And those are just the confirmed guest performers.

Unconfirmed guests include Jay-Z, Beyonce, Dave Groll, the Black Eyed Peas and the Goo Goo Dolls.

Do not miss this show.

Opens 9/7 in Philadelphia.

Only 8 performances.

Seating is extremely limited.

$20 tickets available now.

Shiva3 Productions presents Beautiful Zion: A Book of the Dead.

*

“I have here a 1917 original William Fuld Ouija Board and planchette. I have consulted polarity practitioners and radionics experts from around the world. They have examined the entire Community Education Center, and they have determined that there are, shall we say, certain presences in the Blue Grotto. And that these presences have a vortex, as it were. A gateway, if you will.  An entrance to Hell, if I may.  And that entrance is right over there.  Tonight it contains a small table and two chairs. Who’s in? Shall we put all I’ve told you tonight to the test? I need 3 incredibly cool, incredibly brave, bold, fearless volunteers to help me reach across to Beautiful Zion and bring his ass back.”

$20.00 tickets to this intimate, action-packed, supernatural event are onsale now. Only 8 performances. Only 16 seats per show. Order now. Advance online orders only — no tickets will be sold at the door.