"A NOTE FROM THE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR...

London After Midnight was one of the most popular and legendary of the collaborations between director Tod Browning and his favorite actor, Lon Chaney.  Supposedly, the film was a testing ground for Dracula, which everyone naturally assumed the two would work on together.  Chaney's makeup was dramatic as ever, Browning was, by all contemporary accounts, on top of his game throughout, and audiences loved it.  Then along came sound cinema, and the studios discarded and tossed aside thousands of movies that were now deemed unsalable in the headlong rush to embrace the new technology.  London After Midnight was forgotten almost overnight, and, within ten years of its making, there were no prints in existence whatsoever.  London After Midnight was forever lost.

Salome is my London After Midnight.  I have no photos.  No videos.  No documentation whatsoever.  Hell, I can't even find the PR anywhere.  I have the cue discs, the script, and a poster.  That's it.  I got nothing.

So, you'll have to take my word for it as to how good it was, or ask someone who was in it, or saw it.  I remember someone approaching me at a Nada mixer in late 2000, who, out of the clear blue sky, said to me that the show was "one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen on a stage", and said it with such conviction that I wondered, for a moment, if I hadn't in fact driven the poor fellow mad with the show's rather abrasive power.

We'd covered pretty much the whole of Nada with white sheets, rearranged the chairs into a combination L-thrust and in-the-round seating, and let the audience into the house alone, with no one to help them to their seats, and no one visible through the booth window.  The show was based in a psuedo-20's setting, with tuxes, evening gowns, the works.  The sound was murky and loud, the lighting harsh and orangish, the whole effect was ghostly, unpleasant, and like being trapped as an unseen guest at a dinner party gone really really wrong.  It was gorgeous.  I'm immensely proud of it still.  You should have seen it.

It's gone now.

DANSE MACABRE THEATRICS PRESENTS

salome

in order of appearance DAVID TULLY  *  WINTER MILLER  *  MARK G. CISNEROS  *  SEAN J. RICHARDS  *  TARA LYNN SULLIVAN  *  AMY CAITLIN CARR  *  FRANK CWIKLIK  *  BOB BRADER  *  MOIRA STONE  *  DOUGLAS SCOTT SORENSON  *  DANIEL KOENIG  *  CHRISTIAAN KOOP

Written by Oscar Wilde

Choreopgraphy by Jodi Schilling

Produced by Frank Cwiklik

Co-Producer Michele Schlossberg

Designed and Directed by Frank Cwiklik

PERFORMED 2/2000 at Todo Con Nada