In this week’s second installment Will Leschber talks perfect film pairings with Christine Keating, writer of tonight’s Theater Pub, Don’t Fall Asleep.
If yesterday’s blog wasn’t enough for you, we’re back again gazing at the dark themes on the other side of our eyelids. Do we even need sleep? Sleep is for chumps. Speaking as a new parent, if you can’t function on two hours of sleep, man, then you ain’t really living! Get busy living…or get busy zzzzzzzzzzzzz…WHOOPS, sorry there. I nodded off for a second. What was I talking about? Oh yeah, horror cinema and the sweet paralysis of sleep.
We spoke about the masters of horror genre and touched on the cultural creations that haunt our dreams. But inescapable boogiemen are not the limits of the dangers that we are told lay past our bedtime. Local Bay Area multifaceted theater maker, Christine Keating, in writing Don’t Fall Asleep explores our relationship to sleep and the trappings therein. Keating weaves threads colored in the folklore of yesteryear, cultural touchstones like alien abduction, and modern tales of the alternate life that takes over when we close our eyes.
Keating loved our connection to A Nightmare on Elm Street thematically when discussing Wes Craven but she actually had some unconventional and excellent film recommendations, to seek out if you just can’t get enough stories about the non-fiction, vulnerable nature of sleep. She had this to say:
Devil In The Room
“My recommendations are actually for documentaries that are terrifying. One is a short documentary that you can watch all on YouTube called Devil in the Room, and the other is a full length called The Nightmare. Both are documentaries that take a lot of their stylistic choices from horror movies. They are both about sleep paralysis, and they portray the experience pretty clearly, speaking as someone who frequently experiences the kind of sleep paralysis hallucinations they are talking about. I love how Devil in the Room talks about how culture influences these hallucinations, from the bear like Tokolosh to the modern alien abduction stories. Those are stories and origins I tried to represent in the many monologues and scenes of Don’t Fall Asleep!”
The Nightmare
Man, how am I ever going to go to bed now?! Oh well. It’s only movie, it’s only a movie…it’s only a play, it’s only a play, it’s only a play.
Devil in the Room, again, is available on YouTube. The Nightmare (2015) is available to rent on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, etc. And Don’t Fall Asleep has it’s final performance tonight at Pianofight. See it before it’s too late!
San Francisco Theater Pub 