Fallen Saints
Halloween 2024: Force of Nature Productions offers their newest installment of Fallen Saints, titled “The Body of Ciara Molloy,” a supernatural tale set in a Dublin pub in 1866. Also on tap is the immersive “Shady Yew Experience,” which invites the audience to hang around after the play to enjoy a drink, play shove ha’penny, and get their fortune told.
Dates: September 6-7, 13-14, 20-21.
Showtimes: “The Body of Ciara Molloy: A Fallen Saints Tale” @ 8pm & 9:15pm. “The Shady Yew Experience” 10:30pm.
Tickets: Shows are separately ticketed. If you purchase tickets for both shows, you receive a $10 discount.
Location: Brickhouse Theatre – 10950 Peach Grove Street, North Hollywood, CA
Website: fonproductions.com
Note: Shows are limited to 20 guests, and the experience involves standing, walking, and interactive participation. No public restrooms are available. Parking is tricky, so arrive early.
Force of Nature Productions – Fallen Saints: History & General Information
Clever in concept, Fallen Saints makes good use of limited space, and production values evoke occult atmosphere in period settings. Early installments perhaps promised more than they delivered, but the series continues to grow with every installment, establishing itself as an eagerly anticipated Halloween Theatre event.
Fallen Saints is an annual anthology series of short plays staged by Force of Nature Productions, loosely connected by the recurring character of Darkness, who observes and perhaps encourages the darkness lurking within humanity. The stories, which sometimes incorporate interactive elements, tend to use period settings and/or historical incidents (the Whitechapel Murders, the Salem Witch Trials), with an emphasis on human tragedy leading to horrific consequences.
The series presented its first installment in 2016, which was simply titled Fallen Saints at the time, though it has been retroactively labeled Fallen Saints: White Chapel. It took the form of a seance that resurrects the spirit of Jack the Ripper. Fallen Saints: Dia De Los Muertos followed in 2017, presenting an origin story for the legendary character of La Llorona (“The Crying Woman”), the ghost of a woman who murdered her children. The following year offered Fallen Saints: Dark, highlighting the character of Darkness, which uncharacteristically arrived in August, well before the Halloween season. 2019’s Fallen Saints: Salem was a fictionalized retelling of the famous witch hysteria of 1609.
One clever aspect of the series is that it does not always spell out its intentions, instead providing information and allowing audiences to put the pieces together. Thus Fallen Saints: White Chapel included details and victim names that pointed to Jack the Ripper without ever naming the notorious serial killer. Likewise, Fallen Saints: Dia De Los Muertos did not announce up front that it was the tale of La Llorona; only gradually did it reveal that the tragic woman at the center of its story would go on to become the famous mournful ghost.
After going dark during the 2020 pandemic, Force of Nature Productions planned to resurrect Fallen Saints for 2021; however, the plans did not materialize.
Force of Nature Productions has presented other horror- and fantasy-themed plays during the fall season, including actor Duffy Hudson’s one-man performance as Edgar Allan Poe in 2018 and 2019. Their non-Halloween productions include Romeo and Juliette in Hell, Hudson’s one-man A Christmas Carol, and and the comedic spoof, A Telenovela Christmas Carol.
Fallen Saints Archive: Read reviews and interviews about Fallen Saints and other works by Force of Nature Productions…