Zombie Town at Sleepwalkers Theater

Damian Lanahan-Kailish in Zombie Town Photo by Kirsten Goldberg

Playwright Tim Bauer wanted to do a play about theater company going to a small town to talk to people and make their story into a play. And he loves zombie movies—something about how slow moving the monsters are makes him laugh. So in his latest play, Zombie Town , which opens at the Exit Theater in San Francisco Oct. 9, he combined the two ideas. Catharsis Theater goes to Harwood, Texas to interview people there who have been attacked by zombies. Because when the flesh-eating undead come to town, there’s nothing to help you heal like theater.

“I had seen a number of plays with one actor playing a bunch of different characters and it’s interesting seeing one character transform into someone else,” Bauer said about his desire to have there be a theater group in the play.

Bauer, who used to live in Texas, thought there would be a sort of culture clash with people from San Francisco going to Texas—and culture clashes are central metaphors in zombie movies, he says.

“Like in Night of the Living Dead they’re trapped in a house and characters who would have been judging one another have to band together to save themselves,” he said. “I thought the characters would be fun to play around with. In this there’s an accountant character and a rock and roll character and each thinks the other one is an idiot, but then they have to work together to survive.”

But don’t worry—you don’t have to be a zombie expert to enjoy Zombie Town.
“A lot of the people who have read the script have said nice things about it,” Bauer said. “You can follow the arc of story – it’s a very simple arc and a lot of the humor comes from people telling the story from interviews and what the town is like.”

This is Bauer’s first time working with Sleepwalkers Theater and he has nothing but good things to say.

“They only do original plays,” he said. “What’s great about them is they have a core group of actors so I was able to kind of tailor things directly to the actors. And Tore (Ingersoll – Thorp) is a director as well as the artistic director, so he really understands story arcs and is great to collaborate with.”