'Sleepy Hollow Experience' brings immersive theater to Granbury

Travel inside the mind of short-story writer Washington Irving — and try not to lose your head — during “The Sleepy Hollow Experience,” a modern retelling of the classic spooky tale.

Created and produced by nationally renowned theater director Brian Clowdus, attendees will be immersed in the Sleepy Hollow universe as they become part of the action.

Taking place at the Dora Lee Langdon Cultural & Educational Center grounds, the audience will move with the actors throughout the story. The one-hour event will begin on the steps of the Langdon house, move to the Langdon Center Concert Hall and will end the night on a makeshift bridge. 

“You move with the actors the whole time. The fact that we have an actual church to perform a chunk of the show in is pretty incredible,” Clowdus said. “The big party scene is taking place on this like epic round courtyard area. We're going to have beautiful string lights, lanterns all throughout the trees. At the very end of the show, after all the ghost stories are told, it's time for Ichabod to finally walk home alone through the bridge. The audience will come through ... and the bridge will basically protect them from the headless horseman because we're going to have an actual horse and a headless horseman on it. This is where Ichabod finally meets his ill fate at the end of the show.”

“The Sleepy Hollow Experience” is now showing on Thursdays through Sundays until Oct. 31. Thursdays and Sundays will have one show at 7 p.m., and tickets will cost $29 for adults and $19 for youth. Fridays and Saturdays will have two shows: 7 p.m. and 9 p.m., and tickets will cost $39 for adult and $29 for youth.

A VIP experience will also be available for $99 during the showing season and is limited to 50 people per night.  VIP includes a private haunted indoor cocktail party experience, with music and scares 30 minutes prior to the show.

The actors will be able to interact with the audience in a way that most productions are limited to due to limited space, which makes “The Sleepy Hollow Experience” unique and completely immersive. The audience will feel like they’ve stepped inside the actual short story, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”

“You feel like you're in the show,” Clowdus said. “There's gonna be fun little scares throughout. The cool thing about this show is that it's different every night based on the energy of the audience. Every night, we'll have a little bit of a different flavor because the actors are improv-ing (improvising) based off of what the audience is doing.”

“From backstage to front stage, there's no fourth wall, so it allows the characters to really be part of whatever the audience is part of,” saidArtur Aleksanyan, who plays Ichabod Crane. “There's an incredible ambience and energy in the setting, and then everyone is part of the story. We get to tell it and kind of experience it and be part of this live thing. It's the live-est theater I've ever done actually.”

Paloma Power, who plays Katrina Van Tassel, compares “The Sleepy Hollow Experience” to that of being in a movie.

“I've fortunately done the show with Brian before, and it really is one of the creepiest, most theatrical experiences,” she said. “You are in the scenes with the story being told around you as if you are experiencing the event as it happens, which really just gives you chills the whole time. There's extra little creepy things that might come and pop up behind you. You'll feel spooks, but you will also feel so much magic. It's one of the best feelings of theater.”

Something new that Clowdus has added to the show this year is the incorporation of acoustic music performed by the cast.

“We've got a piano, we've got an accordion, we've got guitars, and all of the actors are singers and musicians, so for a good chunk of the show, we’ll have this acoustic unplugged moment of the church and the school house, which is going to be really beautiful,” Clowdus said.

“The cast is going to be mingling around, they're gonna be telling ghost stories, there's gonna be live music, and we're also going to have a bar set up with fun-themed cocktails,” Clowdus said. “It’s gonna feel like you've walked into the Disney-level Haunted Mansion. We're also weaving in some local Granbury ghost stories, just to give it a little bit of local flavor. It's also good for kids; we've got mocktails and cocktails.”

Danny Kuehn, who plays Brom Bones, has never experienced an immersive production and said he is “just as excited to experience it with the actual audience.”

“I am most excited to bring you history brought to life,” said Vincent Sadler, who plays storyteller No. 2.  “The (encapsulation) of these ghost stories into a live performance where you get to walk in the shoes of people long dead, just thrills me to the bone. You don't get that experience every day. In fact, you never get to. There's a reason why it's called Brian Clowdus Experience because he takes something that is just a show and turns it into a fully interactive and involved theater experience for anyone of all ages to bear witness to and frolic in.”

Storyteller No. 1 is played by Alexa Munsinger. She said when the audience watches the show, it’s “not like they’re watching actors; it’s like they’re with the characters.”

“The ‘fourth wall’ (the space separating performers from the audience) being broken over and over again, is just something really exciting as an audience member, because you really get that different kind of bonding with the setting. The characters itself are something way different than you'd ever expect. It's like you're in a classic novel brought to life,” she said.

Clowdus said he hopes “The Sleepy Hollow Experience” will become an annual event and will open opportunities for Granbury to host other immersive entertainment experiences in the future.

To purchase tickets, go online to brianclowdus.com.