Play: "Hell House" - has anyone heard about this? a friend

[katty]

of mine from NYC said was really intense/horrific.


more: http://www.playbill.com/news/article/102438.html

Mind the Flames: Cautionary Theatre Event, Hell House, Gets Brooklyn Run
By Kenneth Jones
01 Oct 2006


What's thought to be the first New York City area presentation of a "hell house" — the gorily didactic theatre phenomenon started by Christian Evangelicals around the nation — opens for business Oct. 1 in Brooklyn.

The staging, based on text created by Christians who want to show the wages of sin and the path of good living, is presented by Arts at St. Ann's and the irreverent troupe Les Freres Corbusier in Brooklyn starting Oct. 1.

[Avalux]

1. They have a Hell House at the church down the street -

It's been there during October for the past couple of years; big tents, set up like a haunted house. I think a lot of people go expecting the fun of a haunted house but get a heavy-handed dose of "this is what happens when you sin". False advertising, IMHO.

[katty]

2. whoa....really?! indeed, false advertising!

[Avalux]

4. Yeah, my daughter wanted to go.

I wasn't sure what it was, but knowing the church (fundamentalist), had a feeling it wasn't your typical haunted house. I looked into it and they do set it up to lure unsuspecting people; political agenda too.

Here's wiki's entry about it:

A Hell House, also commonly known as a judgment house, is a haunted house-style attraction typically run by fundamentalist Christian churches or parachurch groups. These attractions are meant to depict the divine judgements that await unrepentant sinners and the torments of the damned in Hell. They are typically operated in the days preceding Halloween.

The first hell house may have been created by Jerry Falwell in the late 1970s. Similar events began in several regions during that period. More recently, the concept has been promoted by Pastor Keenan Roberts, originally of Roswell, New Mexico, who started a well-known hell house there in 1992. Since that time, hell houses have become a regular fixture of the Halloween season. Pastor Roberts remains active in what he calls his hell house ministry by providing kits and directions to enable churches to perform their own attractions. He is now the senior pastor of Destiny Church Of The Assemblies Of God where Hell House is still performed each year in the month of October.

The exhibits at a hell house often have a remarkably political tone and tend to focus on sins that are also issues of concern to the religious right in the United States. Hell houses frequently feature exhibits that are meant to depict sin and its consequences. Common examples include abortion, homosexuality, suicide, use of alcoholic beverages and other recreational drugs, adultery and pre-marital sex, occultism, and Satanic ritual abuse.<1> Given the theology of the churches that sponsor them, hell houses typically emphasise the belief that anyone who does not accept Jesus as their personal saviour is damned to Hell. However, these politically controversial sins are usually singled out for special criticism in a typical hell house. Hell houses have been criticised for misleading potential patrons that they are a conventional Halloween attraction rather than an evangelical presentation. They are also often criticised within the Christian community as being too focused on the number of conversions rather than long lasting commitments to Christianity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_house

[katty]

6. yes, my friend mentioned some of this-OMG! really sick stuff

[Shipwack]

3. I've heard of them before...

The ones that I'm thinking of are evangelical Christian versions of your typical JayCee type "haunted house". Instead of showing a mad scientist lab, they have a woman dying while getting an abortion (with tons of gore and blood, and scary looking medical instruments, of course). Instead of a mummy, they'll show an "AIDs Patient" lying weakly in a dirty bed, festering with sores, who is "paying the price of a homosexual lifestyle"

I think it ends with an old fashion hell room with fire, brimstone, the devil poking someone with a pitchfork, etc...

I'm taken back by an acting troupe being involved, though... I would have thought that they tended to be too liberal to help propagate "christian" propaganda...

/e google search

http://www.lesfreres.org /

Hmmm... They don't seem particularly right wing. I suppose shocking is shocking, and if they can get the Christian Right to give them funding, it's ok with them. To be honest, not sure how that makes me feel...

::edited for grammar::

[SharonAnn]

14. I learned about them when I moved to Tennessee. There's also

"Judgment House".

Pretty weird, I think. But then, middle school students and high school students are the intended audience and that age group goes for that kind of stuff. Not the religion, the gore.

[Liberal Jesus Freak]

5. I have heard of it.

However, what in the world are they trying to accomplish? My bible says "love God & love each other"--no addendum about scaring the crap out of people to convince them to do that!

[katty]

7. they, like the neocons love the 'terror' trap-dark age hysteria

[TlalocW]

8. We've got a pretty big one in Tulsa at G.U.T.S. Church

Which does its damned best to out-crazy the Oral Roberts people and the Rhema people in Broken Arrow (religious college, BA is a suburb). What's funny is that one year I helped out at one of our magic/costume stores in town during the Halloween season, and I heard lots of horror stories from the owner about how G.U.T.S. always try to get things for free or at a reduced price from places like his, and how it's hard to get them to even pay their bills. Very Christian.

Basically, every room deals with presented what they consider sins in a very graphic, gory way. In the abortion room, the doctors are all Mengele-like monsters who just want to kill babies, and the mother is depressed and suicidal because of her choice. The homosexual room has the "homosexuals" burning in hell and screaming about how they wish they could have resisted their "unnatural urges" while alive, etc.

I've never gone, but I've wanted to just so when I walk into the homosexual room I could say in my best faux-lisp, "Oh, my God! Look at those curtains! This is hell for homosexuals!" Probably get me gang-witnessed to.

TlalocW

[katty]

9. so they let children see all this?! it makes me ill thinking about it

[TlalocW]

12. Well, yeah...

I mean, I'm sure they do a little CYA where there are warnings about the graphic nature of it, but for all intents and purposes they advertise it as a regular haunted house. And you shouldn't be surprised - look at that Jesus Camp movie. There are fundies out there who think that they need to get the kids into their camp as soon as possible through any means possible even if it's psychologically damaging.

TlalocW

[katty]

13. yes, of course they do

[MountainLaurel]

18. They WANT children to see it

That's the whole point, to scare them into salvation.

ML, who spent her childhood attending a fundamentalist church and still has the panic attacks to prove it

[Shipwack]

10. OMG! lol

I now have something to do this weekend...

[bobbieinok]

16. GUTS church in Tulsa

I've watched services a few times on TV. They promote themselves (or used to) as a church for those uncomfortable/unwelcome in traditional services.

What I saw in the congregation were traditional church people coming (vast majority in the congregation) to see the non-traditionals.

I heard the preacher was sort of a hell's angel motorcycle guy who 'found Jesus' and sees his ministry as being to that type of people.

The preacher has spoken a few times in chapel at ORU and has recruited students to work in the 'Hell House.'

[TrogL]

11. They've been doing these for years

Primarily homophobic, racist crap.

[Demeter]

15. Stands To Reason--Wherever Two Or More Fundies Are Gathered

there is Hell.

"Hell is other people."

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905 - 1980), Closed Doors (1944)

"Jean Paul Sartre says in "No Exit" that hell is other people. Well, our task in life is to make it heaven. Or at least earth."

Alan Alda (1936 - ), GQ, Summer, 1980

[bobbieinok]

17. and any church can get a kit to create their own Hell House!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/10/10/15640/438/F...

Jesus' Hell House
By moiv Tue Oct 10, 2006 at 01:56:40 AM EST

....

Although Jerry Falwell is credited with originating the Hell House concept -- and his Liberty University is sponsoring an elaborate version, known as ScareMare, in Virginia this year -- any church can stage its own Hell House by purchasing an Outreach Kit from the Hell House Ministry of the Reverend Keenan Roberts, pastor of Colorado's New Destiny Christian Center ("Soaring at a Godly Altitude").

....

For a basic charge of $299, with additional sin scene modules available for about $45 more, Pastor Keenan's kits provide all the resources a church might need to stage its own extremely realistic event as a "dynamic evangelism tool" --including special effects CDs, advice on the best kinds of meat to buy to make stage prop fetuses, and ... oh, yes ... how could I have forgotten the guns?

....

(description of one church's event)

The funeral home where the descendent died from AIDS contracted from the so called Alternated Life Style, the funeral in progress. A young lady laying in a casket, mom, grandma and sisters weeping for their lose. They seen how Satan had deceived this young lady into believing that she was born a lesbian and she had died from aids. A demon jumps out from behind the casket and informs the group how he had convinced her into believing that this was the way she was and how they had led her into hell through this deception without the hope of escape.

school class room where a troubled teen enters the room during class and shoots several students and the teacher, this depicting school violence we are plagued with today because of sin, no more bibles or prayer in our public school. A demon speaks to the young man with a gun hidden under a long black coat he carries out the mission the demon has convinced him to carry out. The demon is present during all of this as the groups looks on.

The abortion clinic, a young lady lay on the operating table as the medical staff take the life of another unborn child. The demon is present telling the tour group how he had convince this young lady to murder her unborn child. The young lady dies during the abortion.

....

Then the group is then led to HELL, It can't be described it has to be experienced!
People crying and screaming lock up in chains in a smoke filled rooms with eerie glow of fire. They seek help from the tour group as they cry out for help. Satan appears as he dooms the tour group to an eternity in hell.

Out of no where The Angel of The Lord appears and leads the group to heaven with all it's WONDER and GLORY they came face to face with JESUS CHRIST THE KING OF KINGS AND THE LORD OF LORDS! (an actor of course) where they told the gospel story and given a chance to be born again. Councilors are stationed just out in the lobby to assist anyone that would ask.

And plenty of impressionable youngsters probably needed them.

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