The Lewis Center for the Arts’ Program in Theater and Music Theater at Princeton University presents Graveyard Shift, a gothic horror tragicomedy conceived by Princeton senior Ash Baudelaire that is a production of the entrepreneurial start-up House of Bones Theater Company (HOBTC). The immersive production invites the audience to move among the cast onstage throughout the performance and is directed by senior Matthew Cooperberg. Baudelaire and Cooperberg are the co-founding artistic directors of HOBTC. Performances are November 7, 8, 13, 14 and 15 at 8 p.m. in the Wallace Theater at the Lewis Arts complex on the Princeton campus. Free and open to the public, tickets can be reserved through University Ticketing. The Wallace Theater is fully accessible with an assistive listening system. The November 14 performance will be open captioned. Guests in need of other access accommodations are invited to contact the Lewis Center at LewisCenter@princeton.edu at least one week prior to the event date.
Set in a haunted graveyard-turned-luxury-apartment complex, Graveyard Shift features fugitive librarians, a puritanical gravedigger, and a steampunk orphan who grapple with the fear of death as the cost of one’s “calling” threatens to claim the ultimate price. Blending high-stakes physicality, lyrical dialogue, and heavy metal, Graveyard Shift is a darkly absurdist exploration of faith, grief, and narratives of survival.
House of Bones Theater Company is described as “an interconnected gothic theatrical universe where the absurd gets thrillingly dark.” The company notes that it creates horror tragicomedies that aggrandize human complexity in order to reimagine theater for the streaming generation.
“We fuse spooky carnival vibes with heavy metal, dark cabaret, the sociological imagination, and vintage Americana,” said Cooperberg. HOBTC’s immersive “undead plays” are designed to offer a “wickedly entertaining journey through the macabre.” Normally recorded from onstage, these live performances of Graveyard Shift allow audiences to slip into the place of the camera, a demonstration of theater reimagined for digital distribution. “Our theater isn’t live,” notes Baudelaire, “it’s undead.”
Matthew Cooperberg and Ash Baudelaire of the student-created start-up theater company, House of Bones. Photo credit: Beth Jarvie
Baudelaire’s work on the project represents her independent project toward a minor in the Program in Theater and Music Theater. Cooperberg is also a theater minor and will present an original play in February as their senior project. Students earning a minor take the course “Introduction to Theater Making,” four other theater, music theater, music, or dance courses, and provide non-performing support for one or two other program productions. Minors have the option to propose a senior project in spring of their junior year, which might be writing a new work, directing, performing, designing, stage managing, or producing a production; the program’s season is primarily shaped by the interests and proposals of the students in the program. Students’ senior projects are advised by the faculty with support from the professional staff in music, costumes, scenery, light, sound, stage management and producing. Any student can pursue the minor; no application or audition is required, and students with no prior experience are welcome.
Baudelaire and Cooperberg have been working on the start-up aspects of HOTBC since last year. Baudelaire serves as playwright and dramaturg and Cooperberg as the theatrical director. Over the summer, the team received support from Princeton’s Keller Center eLab Summer Accelerator, an intensive program providing the tools and resources students need to develop their own start-up. Over nine weeks, teams work on their ventures, develop their networks, and follow a specialized entrepreneurship curriculum. The team was mentored by Entrepreneurship and Design Fellow Ben Lehnert, Director of Design for Impact Nena Golubovic.
Baudelaire is a transfer student majoring in sociology with a triple minor in theater, humanities, and entrepreneurship. She has performed in several Lewis Center productions and has stage-managed for Princeton Summer Theater. Baudelaire is also a head fellow in Princeton’s Writing Center, studies voice with Barbara Rearick in the Music Department, and is a student stage management mentor for the Lewis Center. She plans to continue building HOBTC’s immersive gothic world beyond graduation.
Cooperberg is a physics major with a double minor in theater and gender and sexuality studies. They have worked on numerous productions at Princeton, both with the Lewis Center and Theatre Intime, including the original play, All the Things They Wish They Said. In February, the Program in Theater and Music Theater will present Cooperberg’s original play, Liminality, which draws on both their work in theater and physics to compare probability, duality, and continuous spectra in quantum mechanics with the amorphous and evolving nature of gender identity. The play experiments with how quantum mechanics and gender exist beyond empirical determination. After Princeton they intend to work as a professional director with HOBTC, as well as through their own original works.
The student cast of Graveyard Shift includes Inci Anali, Eli Edge, Amaya Kelegedara, Nick Pham, Kenzie Schwabe, and Jack Thompson, along with Princeton staff member Chris Twiname. The production also features pre-recorded work by performer Eden Reinfurt of the student group Princeton Aerial Arts Company and select members of the Princeton Playhouse Choir.
In addition to conceiving and writing Graveyard Shift, Baudelaire is serving as dramaturg, co-set designer with Cooperberg, choreographer, and stage manager. Other student members of the production team include Jenna Mullin as lighting designer, Lucy Grunden as assistant stage manager, and Ryan Gao as sound designer with Ryan Gonzales as sound design mentor. Professional members of the production team are Jacqueline Holloway as intimacy/fight director and faculty member Chesney Snow as co-producer. Faculty member Shariffa Ali is project mentor.
Visit the Lewis Center website to learn more about this event, the Lewis Center for the Arts, and the more than 100 public performances, exhibitions, readings, screenings, concerts, lectures, and special events presented by the Lewis Center each year, most of them free.
