Acclaimed Live Show Returns to Playhouse Square April 7
Tickets go on sale Jan. 22
“With its uncanny blend of the macabre and the mundane, the news out of Night Vale sounds like what might occur if Stephen King or David Lynch was a guest producer at your local public radio station.” So reported The New York Times when reviewing “Welcome to Night Vale,” one of the world’s most downloaded podcasts.
The creators of that wildly popular podcast, Welcome to Night Vale, will bring their acclaimed live show to 18 U.S. cities, including a stop at Playhouse Square’s Ohio Theatre, April 7 at 8 p.m. (Tickets go on sale at Noon on, Jan. 22 at playhousesquare.org, 216-241-6000 and the Playhouse Square Ticket Office; Ticket price will be $32.50.)
Like the podcast, the stage version of Night Vale tells stories from the strange desert town of Night Vale, delivering rich, nuanced drama in the form of a community radio show hosted by Cecil Palmer (played by Cecil Baldwin).
The show features a new script, live musical score by Disparition and special musical guests Danny Schmidt and Carrie Elkin.
The Welcome to Night Vale live show appeals to both uninitiated audiences as well as to dedicated fans of the podcast, who hang on Cecil’s every word.
The brand new touring script —their fifth since Welcome to Night Vale first hit the road in 2013— works equally well as a stand-alone show and as a complement to the constantly evolving narrative of the podcast
Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor created the Welcome to Night Vale podcast in 2012, having met through the anarchic, award-winning New York-based theater group the New York Neo-Futurists.
Night Vale quickly became an underground success; in July 2013 it was downloaded 2.5 million times, making it No. 1 on iTunes, ahead of popular programs such as This American Life and Radiolab.
To date, it has been downloaded over 100 million times.
Instead of selling advertisements to fund the podcast, the Night Vale team decided to draw on their backgrounds in the performing arts to launch a touring live show, which has attracted capacity crowds to increasingly large venues in the U.S., Canada and Europe.
Prior to the upcoming dates, the show will tour New Zealand and Australia. Harper Perennial published the first Welcome to Night Vale novel, by Fink and Cranor, which debuted at #4 on The New York Times Fiction Bestseller list.
“Welcome to Night Vale regularly delivers a mix of pitch-black humor and deadpan chills.”—The Los Angeles Times
“Cecil Baldwin is outstanding in live performance: his whole body becomes part of the action, and he becomes so much more than a soothing, lovely voice emanating from my speakers.”(Catch up with the goings-on of Night Vale by subscribing to the Podcast on iTunes, or stream via Stitcher and libsyn.)—xoJane
