‘Nightmare (Before Christmas): The Experiment’ - Will your limits be hit?

The experiment is about to begin. John Harlacher, co-creator and co-director six years, asks the audience to roll up their sleeves so that their forearms are exposed before entering the dark and suffocating hot room. This is a good tactic as it caused many whispers and pained and worried expressions. As the door shuts, a male and a female lab worker approach the audience as they play the subjects in a case study for research on the threshold of fear. They go on to explain, “Studies have shown that the anxiety of the holiday season, coupled with seasonal depression, heightens the neurotransmitters associated with feelings of fear. Although Christmas is supposed to be a joyful time, for many it isn’t. The same endorphins that are released during moments of joy and pleasure are the same ones coursing through your nervous system during times of fright.” The unique idea is to examine the audience’s limits of fear through ten extreme experiments testing a range of common fears among people.

When you first hear the title of the show, you may assume that you are about to see an off-Broadway parody of the classic Nightmare Before Christmas. However, the actual premise of the show is surprisingly a good one. It is without a doubt that the holidays cause anxiety and perhaps depression among people due to the gift buying to party planning. The astute spin put on this fact and scaring the audience before Christmas, just running the show during the last two weeks before Christmas, is quite brilliant. “Tim Haskell, Co-Creator and Co-Director, and I both are theatre directors, and we wanted to find a way to put what we learned from doing the haunted house into a theatre show,” said Harlacher. “I've become interested in magic and using it in a non-traditional context, so that also inspired it.”

What is even more interesting is the choice of setting for this theater experience. “I like using what we do in weird experimental theatre to entertain an audience that doesn't come to experimental theatre,” said Harlacher. The lab workers did an amazing job of staying in character as much as possible and narrating throughout the show to explain each experiment clearly and carefully. The male lab worker was the star of the show, making quick and clever jokes with a straight face, and the female lab worker barely cracked a smile once as she kept her robot-like composure. The first experiment was to test the fear of humiliation; the second was to test the fear of darkness; the third was to test the fear of powerlessness; the fourth was to test the fear of heart break; the fifth was to test the fear of under achievement; the sixth was to test the fear of paranoia; the seventh was to test the fear of pain; the eighth was to test the fear of capacity for cruelty; the ninth was to test the fear of repulsion and the tenth was to test the fear of dread.

The experiments had a pronounced balance of shock and humor from one to the other. For instance, the first experiment, testing the fear of humiliation, had three subjects strip down to their underwear and undergo embarrassing tasks like getting weighed and having an audience member smell inside their sneakers. One of the most humorous aspects that occurred during this experiment was that one of the subjects chose to opt out of the experiment so they had to sit in the "Soft Spot," [a corner covered with the Charmin logo] and wear a pink dunce cap for the remainder of the experiment. The third experiment, testing the fear of powerlessness, had two subjects, the first strapped in with peanut butter on their nose for a rat to eat, and the second having to voluntarily sit on their hands as a roach crawled up their shoulder — both reasonably gross, but effectively pushed the limits. The seventh experiment, testing the fear of pain, created the illusion that a large needle was stuck under the skin of a subject’s arm, therefore why the subjects needed their forearms exposed.

The eighth and best balanced experiment, testing the fear of capacity for cruelty, was to observe others' cruelty and what someone would do to others if offered money. For one portion of the experiment, the lab workers offered the show’s character, Stove Top the bum, money to have his hand closed in a large animal trap and have his tongue closed in a mouse trap. During the next portion, the lab workers offered a subject money to hit Stove Top’s hand with a mallet and the last portion had eight subjects compete for a six inch Subway sandwich by eating and drinking disgusting samples of "human saliva" and "pre-chewed gum." And to end the show, the tenth and final experiment, testing the fear of dread, had the male lab worker successfully trick the audience into thinking he cut his hand off in an industrial fan with steel blades. The female lab worker, still in character, played a Christmas song on the violin and splattered fake blood on the audience before the audience was somewhat rapidly escorted out. Overall, the experiments proved what they wanted to study because each audience member and subject chosen ultimately felt fear at some point during each.

Although the experiments did have a great balance, some were executed better than others, especially because of the subjects chosen for some of the experiments. The show was definitely scary, but the hype inflicted on the audience before the show began and the fear imposed before each experiment outshined the fear produced in the end.

The show is undeniably a great combination of fright and humor, one that Harlacher describes as, “like being in the best room of a haunted house for fifty minutes.” It is one experience that will have you hit YOUR limits.