Real, virtual worlds intersect in Bricolage's 'Neighborhood 3'

by Alice T. Carter

Neighborhood 3 is a community where distinctions between virtual and actual reality are intriguingly murky. It's as difficult to tell them apart as it is to separate the living from the living dead.

Set in a suburban subdivision with identical houses, Jennifer Haley's play "Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom" tracks the movements of a group of teens addicted to an interactive online horror game.

The goal is to escape from the neighborhood after obliterating the army of zombies who threaten to overrun an increasingly familiar suburban subdivision.

As concerned but ineffectual parents watch the game take over their kids' lives, real and virtual worlds intersect in horrifying ways.

The Bricolage Production Company's production of "Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom" begins performances Friday at the company's performance space Downtown.

"It's a cool show about zombies," says Matt M. Morrow, a self-confessed zombie and horror fan and the show's director. "I believe I've never read anything like it."

In August, Morrow directed a staged reading of "Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom" for Bricolage as part of its six-play staged-reading series. Its popularity with audiences earned it the fully staged production that opens the night before Halloween.

"This will be a complete oral, visual and visceral experience. It's going to completely surround (the audience), and that is reflected in these characters who are pulled into the video game and taken out of their world and pulled into something both extraordinary and recognizable," Morrow says.

Will the audience actually see the zombies?

That depends on your interpretation, Morrow says: "I think you do in a sense. Jennifer Haley is using it as a metaphor for who you become in the mindless suburban world."

There's more to the play than zombies, violence and gory thrills, Morrow says.

"This has an arc. The world changes throughout the course of the show, and people react to that. They interact, relate and transform," Morrow says. "The show is about connections and the inability to face your community and your family members."

It's also very funny, he adds.

"I don't think you can have true horror without comedy. ... Both are visceral, gut reactions. I think it's about being put on edge and made vulnerable. In that experience, laughter is a defense."

As a preface to the performances, Bricolage is turning its outer lobby into a game arcade.

Beginning at 8:30 p.m. on performance nights, ticket holders can test or display their gaming skills while enjoying snacks and cocktails, which will be available for purchase.

Bricolage's latest is a horror show about ... parents, teen-agers and online gaming.

by Bill O'Driscoll

Jennifer Haley did eventually wind up playing World of Warcraft, the online "quest" game that indirectly inspired her play Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom. In fact, she kind of got addicted to it.

But the play's seed was actually her then-teen-age brother's enthrallment with Warcraft, in particular, the odd way their mother handled it. When Haley's brother holed up in his room, their mom got mad at him -- but also brought him dinner at the computer so he could keep playing. She would "berate him and enable him at the same time," says Haley, by phone from Los Angeles.

Neighborhood 3 takes that concept to the next level. In Neighborhood 3's world of cookie-cutter subdivisions, all the teen-agers are addicted to just such a game. But the game's set in a virtual version of their own neighborhood, where the zombies that players must kill look just like their parents. Suburban anomie blurs into psychological horror, and then into the real thing.

Neighborhood 3's characters talk past each other. The game's goal, in fact, is to escape from the neighborhood, by any bloody means necessary. The parents are by turns absent, overindulgent and moralizing. And everyone's trapped in a community where an obsession with safety is the very thing that breeds fear.

Meanwhile, a voice-of-God narrator drily intones gaming instructions ... which helps lend the script the air of a cockpit transcript from a doomed airliner.

Haley says the play's dynamic echoes both horror movies -- where it's scarier when you can't see the monster -- and classic American stage dramas, where the conflict is over things characters can't bring themselves to say. Halo meets Alien as scripted by Ed Albee, perhaps?

The 2008 work has been produced at venues including Louisville, Ky.'s Humana Festival of New American Plays and New York's Summer Play Festival. Its local premiere is Fri., Oct. 30, courtesy of Bricolage theater company.

The intermissionless 75-minute show has a cast of four -- Bjorn Ahlstedt, Tony Bingham, Tami Dixon and Jacqui Farkas, each playing multiple roles. The innovative set, by Stephanie Meyer-Staley, features a life-sized "pop-up" bedroom. Sound and lights will place the action in "another world," promises Matt M. Morrow, the New York-based director who introduced Bricolage to the script.

Morrow says the production begins in a setting that's already only half-real even before characters start losing the ability to address each other directly, rather than through digital avatars. But even as reality's outlines grow fuzzier, the story's engine remains the real human relationships -- especially the painful ones between parents and their teen-agers. 

"Some of the scenes are just hard to watch. I love that!" says Bricolage co-artistic director Jeffrey Carpenter.

Bricolage will leaven the atmosphere with pre-show happy half-hours and a lobby gaming arcade featuring everything from bobbing for apples to Wii.

As for playwright Haley, 38, she eventually backed off Warcraft.

"The thing about these games is, you start playing them and the hours go by like minutes," she says. "It's just too much of a time-eater."

Bricolage presents Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom Fri., Oct. 30-Nov. 28. 937 Liberty Ave., Downtown. $20. 412-381-6999 or www.webbricolage.org

BRICOLAGE SCORES WITH NEIGHBORHOOD 3

BRICOLAGE SCORES WITH NEIGHBORHOOD 3

F. J. Hartland

Out Magazine Pittsburgh

Pampered suburban teens become addicted to a video game and soon the line between reality and the game is erased.  What is real?  What is the game?  Who knows?

This is the premise behind Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom by Jennifer Haley presented by the Bricolage Production Company.Neighborhood 3 creates the ultimate kind of fear…something horrifying in what is supposed to be a safe, quiet environment.  Most chilling is the fact that the monsters here look just like us.  Maybe we are the monsters.

Best of all, you do not need to be a “gaming” expert to understand it—and I’m proof of that!

Directed by Matt M. Morrow, Neighborhood 3 has to be one of the finest productions in Pittsburgh this year.  The pacing is swift and deliberate.

He is aided by a brilliant cast consisting of Jacqui Farkas (who plays all the daughters in this suburban enclave), Bjorn Ahlstedt (who plays all the sons), Tony Bingham (as all the fathers), and Tami Dixon (all the mothers).

Not only does this amazingly talented ensemble has the task of playing a variety of characters, they also must delineate between when the character is really the character and when the character is an “avatar” (the matching character in the game),

While each new character has a different costume, these changes are minimal; it is up to each actor to use vocal and physical alterations to achieve the effect.  And these four performers meet the demands handily.

Ahlstedt and Farkas capture the naiveté of some the teen-agers and the belligerence of others.  Dixon and Bingham paints parents who are confused, angry, frustrated and sometimes compassionate.

Haley has also peppered her script with a great deal of humor.  Both Dixon and Bingham score big laughs when playing uptight parents.

There is a fifth character who is heard but never seen.  Randy Kovitz provides the voice of the “Walkthrough”—the disembodied narrator who walks the players of Neighborhood 3 through the game.

The set by Stephanie Mayer-Staley is a textbook example of what a set should do.  Not only does it create the feel of a suburban cul-de-sac with its cookie-cutter houses, but this set also manages to capture the essence of the video game.  We see the parallel worlds, the wormholes, the mirror images.  Its stark palate also makes a powerful statement about the world of Neighborhood 3.

Lighting by Niki Ellis is effective, but I did notice some dark spots during early scenes which left actors faces difficult to see.

And let’s not forget the new seating at Bricolage—which is much more comfortable and can accommodate the widest of behinds (i.e. mine!)

With superb direction, powerful performances and a stunning set, you do not want miss to Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom!

Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom runs through November 28.  Learn more at wwwwebbricolage.org.

Bricolage's 'Requisition of Doom' gripping, intelligent

Review: Bricolage's 'Requisition of Doom' gripping, intelligent

By Alice T. Carter, TRIBUNE-REVIEW THEATER CRITIC
Monday, November 2, 2009

Jacqueline Marie Farkas
Jason Cohn

Alice T. Carter is the theater critic for the Tribune-Review. She can be reached via e-mail or 412-320-7808.

For those whose fascination with zombies is as indestructible as the undead themselves, Bricolage Production Company provides a drama that's both gripping and intelligent. Set in a soulless suburban development of identical houses, "Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom" revolves around teens addicted to an interactive online horror game set in a suburban development that mirrors their own. As the game becomes more and more realistic, their increasingly alarmed parents are as clueless about what to do as they are about the lives of their offspring.

Aided by Matt M. Morrow's precise direction and Stephanie Mayer-Staley's imaginative set design, Bricolage's dynamic cast of four accent the immediacy, horror and intelligence of Jennifer Haley's script about the undead who may be lurking among our own families and friends.

The production continues through Nov. 28 at 937 Liberty Ave., Downtown. Performances: 9 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. Admission: $15 in advance, $20 at the door. Details: 412-381-6999 or www.webbricolage.org or purchase tickets online at www.brownpapertickets.com/event/85826.