October brings an immersive horror house, Pedro Reyes’ frightening immersive installation on the election, and an evening of hilarious duets by Erin Markey and Emily Bate.

Check out the shows we scared up for you this week. As always, the weekly roundup isn’t an endorsement, as we’ve not personally seen everything. It’s our way of keeping you in the loop.

CABARET/COMEDY/LGBTQ

“Hey Girl, That’s My Girl”
Erin Markey and Emily Bate
Joe’s Pub, NYC
Oct. 20

Erin Markey and Emily Bate continue to explore their onstage vocal chemistry and offstage twenty-four-hour-a-day buddy comedy performance project in a night of duets. Inspired by listening to Barbra Streisand’s album Duets on long drives to their shared homeland of Michigan and aspirationally training to become the red-blooded sopranos they never accepted they always wanted to be, Bate and Markey imprint the weird romance of their 15 year long friendship onto the hetero-camp tradition of the duet. Some of the angels guiding their way include Kid Rock, humiliating sex, Linda Ronstadt, their obsessions with their parents, Whitney Houston and their own songwriting selves. They are joined onstage by pianist Ian Axness and drummer Mike Marcinowski.

GET TICKETS HERE

IMMERSIVE/INSTALLATION/ELECTION

“Doomocracy”
Pedro Reyes
Creative Time
Brooklyn Army Terminal
October 7-November 6, 2016

Doom•oc•ra•cy (dü-ˈmä-krə-sē), n. 1. A form of government in which the supreme power is vested in a tyrant by a terrified general electorate. 2. The esoteric arithmetic that makes the electoral process malleable. 3. A corporate coup d’état in slow motion. 4. Permanent global war waged in the name of freedom. 5. A house of political horrors at the Brooklyn Army Terminal from October 7 to November 6.

Exchanging political fights for political frights, Creative Time and Pedro Reyes will take over the Brooklyn Army Terminal this October in an exciting new collaboration. Doomocracy, a major new immersive installation by Reyes, will mark the confluence of two events haunting the American cultural imagination: Halloween and the presidential election.

How much surveillance are we willing to accept? How much pollution? How much corporate malfeasance? Provoking what Reyes calls “political catharsis,” this immersive artwork will distill the horrors of our political landscape into the form of a haunted house, inviting us to navigate a maze of near apocalyptic torments, from climate change to pandemic gun violence to GMOs. Visitors to Doomocracy will work their way through a labyrinth of rooms, exploring the depth and breadth of American political anxieties.

Opening to the public Oct. 7, running through Halloween and concluding just days before November’s election, Doomocracy will occupy a vital moment in US history, offering the perfect platform and location to create real dialogue around the contemporary state of global and US politics. Doomocracy is curated by Nato Thompson and directed by Meghan Finn, and is free and open to the public, although tickets are limited and must be reserved in advance.

#Doomocracy

SOLD OUT – BUT GET ON THE WAITLIST HERE

IMMERSIVE/HORROR

“This Is Real”
by Psycho Clan
Through Oct. 30, 2016

You’ve been kidnapped.

You don’t remember how; you don’t know by whom.

But there you are, watching the horrific treatment of the person who was taken before you.  They will implore you to help them, but you cannot.  When they are disposed of, it will be your turn.  Your partner is taken to another room. You only have one shot at getting away if you are to survive and be reunited.

This Is Real is NOT A HAUNTED HOUSE. It’s theatrical immersion at its most thrilling.  You are a character in your abduction, and the stakes are real!  In between the moments the psychopaths step out you have to figure out how to survive and escape. “It’s interactive horror theater, a mind-bending survival game, and extreme hide and seek rolled up into an hour’s worth of entertainment!” says creator Timothy Haskell. “Wrong decisions will cost you…don’t get caught!

GET TICKETS HERE