Zen . . . and the art of playing dead.

My last post talked exclusively about my Off-Broadway show, "Theatre of the Macabre" which played for three years in New York City. While I don't plan to talk anymore about this show, the thought occurred to me that you might want to know about one of the more unusual publicity stunts I did to generate buzz for this show. I make reference in the title to Zen . . . as I think that what I did, had a certain amount of Zen to it.

First, a little history. My co-writer Robin Reseen had an interesting publicity idea for Theatre of the Macabre. He wanted to have a dead women lying in a bathtub filled with blood in the lobby of the theatre (as a reference to one of our characters). We looked at different old bathtubs with which we could purchase cheaply. I looked at how much 'blood' would be needed and how long it could last. We toyed with the idea of hiring an actress or placing a fake body in the tub. Eventually the mechanics of having a tub full of 'blood' in the lobby of a theatre became a logistical nightmare. Robin and I talked about other publicity ideas which included outdoor underwater handcuff escapes. One night in Robin's apartment, we were throwing back and forth silly ideas when we came upon the 'corpse' stunt. It went like this: We would have a corpse on the street with a knife piercing a flyer for the show through the corpse's back. At first, it seemed ridiculous, but the more we talked about it, the better it seemed. Robin thought we should hire an actor to be the 'corpse' and we ran several ads but nobody we found, when they were told what they were to do, had the necessary courage. And so, we put the idea on hold.

A month later "Theatre of the Macabre" opened at the 13th Street Theatre on 6th Avenue in Manhattan. I spent an inordinate amount of time handing out flyers (see left) to the show and would stand on street corners in the East and West Village for hours several days of the week trying to drum up interest in the show. One time, I even worked the line at TKTS handing out my flyers to that evening's performance. We gave out half-price tickets, free tickets, I had posters stuck with wheat paste placed on poster boards throughout the city and I ran display ads in the Village Voice--all to get people to come to the show. Still, handing out flyers as I did night after night was exhausting. As any New Yorker knows, it is extremely difficult to hand out anything paper on the street. People are inundated with requests and most are savvy enough not to take them or if they do take them they usually end up as litter a block away. You must be very clever to reach a jaded New Yorker, with the old rule being that if you want someone to take your notice, your coupon, your announcement, your half-off ticket . . . you better include something to eat with it.

Anyways, we had a difficult time handing out flyers so Robin and I decided to make our 'corpse' stunt a reality. Since we could not find any actors with enough courage to undertake this, I decided to do it. The time frame from when Robin and I first talked about the corpse until its final execution (pun intended) was about two months. Here's how it would appear: You and your friends would be walking down a busy street in New York City on a Friday or Saturday night or Sunday afternoon. This could be West Fourth Street, Broadway, Houston or Astor Place. Suddenly, usually at a corner you would come upon a body on the sidewalk with a sword in its back. After your initial shock, one of three people would quickly hand you a flyer to the show and you took it, because you were curious.

This stunt got our flyers into the hands of thousands of people who in a different scenario would not have taken them. It worked better than anything we did to shock the jaded New Yorker with the end result being that every show was either sold-out or close to it. Below is a picture of me lying on the very busy corner of Houston and Broadway on a Friday night in the SoHo District of Manhattan.


The 'look' and mechanics were carefully crafted. I wore black pants, comfortable black boots and a blue, sometimes red sweatshirt. The back of the sweatshirt had a small hole cut in the center. Under the sweatshirt, strapped with Velcro to my body was a large iron plate. Welded to the plate was a half cut sword sticking upward perpendicular to the plate. The handle came off of the blade so that once the plate was strapped to my chest and the blade was fed through the hole in my sweatshirt, the handle could be placed on. I also carried a very small pillow that my girlfriend at the time had made for me. It was about three inches by three inches and was packed tightly with foam. I would place this under my head on the street and it would be concealed in my long hair which fell around the sides of it.

I had three people watching over me. My girlfriend, Francesca, her friend, Craig and our stage manager, John Graffeo. You are very vulnerable when you lay on the street and I depended wholeheartedly on these three individuals to prevent people from stepping on me, shining light into my eyes, pulling my hair, kicking me, trying to grab the sword, etc., etc. In fact, if you look at the above picture closely, you will see I have curled my fingers under my hand. I did this after having them intentionally stepped on so many times before. As for Francesca, Craig and John Graffeo, I could NOT have done this without them. They were the ones who did the real work while I just laid there . . . usually for 90 minutes while the three of them 'watched my back' and gave out thousands of flyers.

To do this effectively, I entered a Zen-like mediation concentrating on only this moment in time. Since I am not that good at complete meditation, I could hear and was aware of the boisterous reactions of people on the street who encountered my 'lifeless' body. Occasionally, people got down on the ground at eye level with me to try and make me blink. My modus operandi was to blink when others were not looking at my face. When people were staring at me, I stopped blinking. With my side view of the street I saw their footsteps inches from my face. I learned to recognize the shoes of my helpers and it gave me great comfort to see those shoes near me as I knew they were watching over me. I remember one girl getting down on the pavement next to me and putting her face so close to mine, I could feel her breath. She wanted to see if I was real. I did not blink and kept my eyes wide open until she gave in and stood up.

I had people trying to step on me and grab the sword. Most of this I was unaware until told about it later. Sometimes I would hear Craig or Francesca or John arguing with people who were trying to touch me. It was quite a surreal scene and I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall of the Crate and Barrel on the corner observing. One time, as I was lying there, I heard a police siren. Francesca ran out into the street to talk to the police. Apparently they had asked her "if I was all right." She informed them that it was a publicity stunt and they laughed and let it go. This was Houston and Broadway in SoHo. Our dealings with the NYPD in Times Square however would not be so friendly.

One time, I decided to perform the 'corpse' as we later called it on Astor Place. The only person working with me this night was my stage manager, John Graffeo. I laid down on the corner at Astor Place and Lafayette and left it up to John to hand out flyers and keep people from touching me. Well, that proved extremely difficult. John had to protect every side of me and it was a daunting job. I remember a group of kids riding their skateboards very close to me trying to run over my hands. John would shoo them away and they would come back with more friends on skateboards. Some kids even showed up on bikes. Pretty soon, they started jumping over me. I could hear the wheels on the pavement and feel the wind as they moved over me. It was the longest 90 minutes of my life and was probably the same for John.

In Times Square, things were considerably different. On one 'corpse' night I was laying there when a police officer walked over and kicked me. Francesca and Craig who were working with me this night screamed at the officer. He kicked me again and then I moved. This time, the NYPD did not take kindly to the stunt. After all, tourists were there and 'what would they think of a dead body lying in the street, with a knife in its back' no less. This was the new Times Square, the amusement park Times Square. Didn't want to scare the tourists.

So, we abandoned the 'corpse' stunt for the short run we had in Times Square, but brought it back when we moved back down to SoHo and the Village. All told, over the three year run, excepting the seven months we were on 48th Street in Times Square, I performed the 'corpse' stunt more than a hundred times and due to the excellent work of Francesca, Craig and John Graffeo, I can fondly remember this difficult event enough . . . to recall it here.