You know those HELL HOUSE things where fundies try to scare people into Christianity? A group of Hollywood celebrities, including Bill Maher, got hold of one of the kits and are putting it on.
NYT link (must register, I believe):
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/29/theater/29RUSH.htmlA Pastor-Inspired Project That's Anything but Evangelical
By RICHARD RUSHFIELD
Published: August 29, 2004
LOS ANGELES
MAGGIE ROWE is blocking the abortion scene. Lying on the operating table, the comedian Sarah Silverman, in the role of the Abortion Girl, props herself up to receive notes. "When they hold the fetus up," Ms. Rowe instructs, "you really need to look at it and then scream, `That's my baby!' "For Ms. Rowe, 30, a Los Angeles actress, comedy writer and Zen Buddhist who fled her Illinois fundamentalist Christian roots, a graphic anti-abortion drama is the last thing she pictured herself staging in Hollywood. But beginning last night and running every Saturday night through Halloween, Ms. Rowe and her band of comedians, actors, special-effects artists and sound engineers — including Ms. Silverman, the comedian David Cross, the actor Richard Belzer, the television host Bill Maher and the former pornography actress Traci Lords — are taking over the Steve Allen Theater on Hollywood Boulevard and converting it, and the two-story office building around it, into a "Hell House."
Or a parody of one. An evangelical Christian take on walk-through haunted houses, Hell Houses replace ghosts and goblins with graphic depictions of young people surrendering to sin and then being tortured in hell for their transgressions. Audiences, led by a demonlike guide, witness scenes played out in unrelenting Grand Guignol fashion, depicting homosexuality, drunken driving and teenage suicide. According to a Hell House "outreach kit" compiled by Keenan Roberts, an Assembly of God minister in Broomfield, Colo., the scenes demonstrate: "The hell and destruction that Satan can bestow upon those who choose not to serve Jesus Christ. Literally, Hell House depicts choices that have the end result of ushering people into hell."
Ms. Rowe got the idea of spoofing Hell Houses after she saw a documentary about them. The 2001 film "Hell House," directed by George Ratliff, is about the annual production in Cedar Hills, Tex., one of the country's largest. She was captivated by what seemed to her the outlandish dramatic extremes of the tableaus, and she recalls telling a friend, Jill Soloway, who is now producing the Hell House in Hollywood with her: "We have to do this. This is the best crystallization of the evils of fundamentalism. We couldn't parody them any better." If protesters descend on the theater, Ms. Rowe said: "My answer to them will be: `We are doing your own script exactly. To the letter.' "
Hell Houses have become popular seasonal displays in recent years mainly because of the kits that Mr. Roberts writes and sells for $200 each. Detailing everything from media relations to the construction of Satan's cape, the kits provide scripts for the seven basic scenes that make up the Hell House repertory. Mr. Roberts says he has sold more than 500 kits since 1995, the year after he began making them. Perhaps the earliest notable Hell House was the one created in 1972 in Lynchburg, Va. Known as the ScareMare, it is sponsored by the local Liberty University, which was founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell, its chancellor and the founder of the Moral Majority.
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