Savannah is known as the most haunted city in the U.S., but have you heard the story about the sandwich shop spectre?
“I would see all these ghost tours and they have all these really serious ghost stories about these really old buildings,” said Will Nunziata, one of the players in the new local improv group Ghosted. “And in my head I was like, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if they had the same serious story about the ghost that haunts Baldinos, or the ghost of the Valvoline?’”
Nunziated wondered aloud, “Who’s telling those ghost stories? It doesn’t have to be so serious. It could be silly and still spooky at the same time.”
Nunziata, along with the troupe’s founder Garrett Zajac and six other local actors, will be taking on the challenge of bringing those boogymen to life at the historic Savannah Theatre on July 19, in an event dubbed “Savannah’s most haunted improv show.”
“It’s built to be a party,” Zajac added. “We’re calling it a spooky soiree.”
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Music, Costumes and 'The Nightmare Box'
The event in downtown Savannah will be the group’s second iteration of the endeavor, the first of which played to a nearly sold-out audience at Tybee Post Theatre back in early May. Unlike the kind of improv that most folks are familiar with, the style popularized by Second City in Chicago and on the television show “Whose Line Is It Anyway?,” where the actors are typically playing short, comedic games in jeans and t-shirts, Ghosted employs a narrative form of the performance medium, one where the stories last 30-45 minutes and have a definitive beginning, middle and end.
“It’s gonna feel like a mini movie,” Nunziata explained, “but you’re gonna be in the room breathing the same air as us, and we’re all discovering it together.”
To help create that higher production value, there will also be costumes, a keyboardist, and someone playing percussion on a device that Zajac has dubbed the "Nightmare Box,” a do-it-yourself version of a common horror movie sound-making machine called an “Apprehension Engine.” Comprised of a conglomeration of items that the group’s head said he found “in the trash and in alleys,” including chains and springs, a piece of an old music box, a toy car wheel, zip ties, a pencil, and a back massager (that he assured me has been thoroughly cleaned), it’s essentially a wooden box connected to an amp that defies it’s humble components to create some of the most horrifying sounds you’ve ever heard.
“When we were first rehearsing, there were moments when I was like, ‘This should feel scarier, but there’s something missing,’” he said of the impetus behind his creation of the Nightmare Box. “And the missing thing was suspense. Horror movies are so good at creating suspense because of their sounds.”
The show will be divided into two parts with an intermission, with each act revolving around a long-form improvisational ghost story, the roots of which will be derived from audience participation portions of the event. The proceedings will be hosted by Kitty Carlisle, played by renowned local actor Nathan Houseman, who will be in drag for the role.
“[The character is] kind of the old money Savannah, been here longer than anyone, knows everything more than you, and is here hosting a party,” Zajac related. "The idea is that she wants to entertain, because that’s what you do in the South. And she’s hired entertainers for the night.”
As a part of that entertainment, Carlisle has brought in a mentalist to help speak with the spirits, and the show will begin with the host inviting the audience to participate in a seance. From there, the story will evolve naturally as the actors take on their characters and interact with each other on stage.
“The philosophy of improv is [that] we’re discovering it together,” Zajac noted. “It’s almost easier to understand it in a musical sense. When Miles Davis improvises in a set, he’s working with everything that’s just happened beforehand. He’s not making something…whole cloth, he has internalized the patterns that have already been set, the sounds that are already on stage, and he’s working with that.”
'…it lives and dies in that room'
Before moving to Savannah, Nunziata was living in New York, where he’d spent decades refining his craft as both a part of Second City’s first New York revue, then as a 20 year member of the weekly improv team at The PIT (Peoples Improv Theater).
For his part, Zajac has been active in the local theater scene, currently appearing in “Grease” at Savannah Theatre, as well as in the upcoming show “The 25th Annual Putnam Spelling Bee” at Tybee Post Theatre. He also spent five years doing 6-8 weekly “Savannah For Morons” comedy tours with Front Porch Improv just prior to going off on his own to establish Ghosted.
All told, the troupe has over a century of combined improv experience going into the event. Many of the performers have extensive straightforward acting experience as well, like husband and wife David and Averie Storck, both of whom teach the art form at Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). For Nunziata, it’s one of the reasons why Ghosted went off so well it’s first time around, and why he thinks people should come check out the second show, which, in spite of its identical theme, will be completely different from that initial offering.
“There are moments in long-form improv where the whole group just really connects, and the audience really connects, and everyone is hanging on every word,” he said. “They know the story doesn’t have an ending yet, so let’s see where this story ends together. And it lives and dies in that room. We were all in this together for this moment of art that will never exist again. And it’s special when it happens.”
If You Go >>
What: “Ghosted: Savannah's Haunted Improv Show”
When: 8 p.m., July 19
Where: Historic Savannah Theatre, 222 Bull St.
Cost: $25
Tickets: savannahtheatre.com/shows/ghosted-improv-show
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