It’s Halloween season in Los Angeles (Halloween runs from now through November here, if you didn’t know) and that means a new edition of perennial favorite Creep LA. This year, Just Fix It Productions has built another winner with Haus of Creep.
Haus of Creep is ostensibly a satire of social media culture, selfie palaces, and Instagram museums, but its aims also appear to be larger. The premise here is that a corporation known only as “The Company” has invited you to the unveiling of their new living art exhibit, made up of actual people (played by a stable of Creep regulars). (As with many of the denizens of the Haus, the show cares not for subtlety.)
Along the way, you’ll meet a series of old and new archetypes, from the middle-manager named Cash (Justin Fix, pulling double duty), to an art critic (Dierde Lyons), to an influencer (Sophie Cooper), to the put-upon worker bee (Dasha Kittredge) who serve as your introduction to this world. Once onside, you’ll be able to take a look at the performance art and oddities that make up the collection The Company has put together.
And that’s where Haus of Creep makes its first major departure from previous versions: Haus is a full sandbox. You’re free to explore the space, view the various art installations (some are actual installations by Media Pollution), and follow characters throughout the Haus as long as you’re not going through a closed door, curtain, or velvet rope.
As with any sandbox style immersive show, there’s something of a learning curve to figuring out how to play in that specific sandbox. Should you stay in one spot, aimlessly wander until something catches your interest, wait for a character to pull you into a new, smaller scene? I spent the early part of my time at Haus of Creep doing some combination of one and two.
It didn’t make for the most effective experience. Once I decided to treat it like Sleep No More and follow a character around, it started to click and I found myself more tapped into the rhythms of the show. In any case, it’s a joy to see the Creep brand successfully experimenting with this style as it’s something of a rarity in Los Angeles.
Given the first change, the second change may come as a surprise. Where their more guided shows have been more about conveying a feeling and a tone, Haus features a stronger narrative and clearer theme. From what I can tell, those aspects run across all the characters and living art installations, which serves to ensure that all attendees are able to anchor on to something despite the roaming allowed by the sandbox.
The story that Haus of Creep wants to tell unfolds across the full hour of the show. And that story mostly deals with The Company’s tenuous grasp on the art that they’ve curated. Rather predictably, things don’t go quite as planned.
Audiences are free to view those exhibits as they sit in their installations or are moved to other ones. And sometimes that means being moved into one of those roped-off rooms for a more private scene. I can’t actually speak to the strength of those scenes though, as I only encountered one. That was mostly an accident as I watched one lengthy scene and then when I tried to leave the curtain was closed for a new one. That second scene was stronger and more interesting, but I still felt like I got stuck in one room when I wanted to be exploring.
Even without many of those private sequences, what’s available in the rest of the space is fun and Creep-y enough to hold its own. Maybe you’ll stumble on Cash locking an old woman into a cage, a patron being told to restrain the art, an auction, a room that looks different than before, or so many other things. There’s a lot going on in the small space and something new is always happening, but with a larger audience than previous Creep shows, it can feel cramped at times.
As the tension and energy builds through the evening, Haus of Creep becomes frenetic and unhinged. The performance art piece/art installation combo morphs from a shot at selfie palaces into a meta-commentary on art and its place in the world. It lacks some of the polish of Awake, but instead has a different kind of strength, one that hammers home its message with vicious intensity.
And that message is impossible to discuss without getting a little spoilery. So, fair warning.
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Off we go.
Here’s our behind the scenes look at ‘Haus of Creep.’
As I said before, Haus of Creep does not give a shit about being subtle. If naming the host of the event, The Company doesn’t give that away, the guy named Cash or the characters who make up the art exhibits being constrained with literal chains might do it. And even though it’s more sledgehammer than razor when it comes to its commentary, that doesn’t make it any less effective.
While the show has billed itself as being about social media, Haus of Creep goes beyond that. Here, corporations have tried to constrain and then use art for their own ends. Now, sure, that happens on Instagram and at selfie museums, but it has also happened with the rise of brands on Twitter, the commodification of fanboyism and nerdom. Things that were considered outside the mainstream have been repurposed to make a company some money.
Much of the art inside the Haus would be thought of as edgy or dark or weird, but that didn’t stop The Company from trying to make a buck off of it. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise when the art in those installations starts to push back. They make their way out of their exhibits, changing and finding new meaning as they go. At one point, Happy the clown can be heard shouting, “I HAVE A VOICE.” As Cash tries to keep everything running, he tries to hide what’s really happening from the guests, but also from himself. How could art push back against him? Against The Company?
Instead, he takes it out on those working for him. I spent a significant amount of my time in Haus of Creep with Becca, a tour guide for The Company. She just wants to do her job and tries her best to keep the guests happy, but is berated by Cash and other, while popping pills just to keep going. She’s giving everything she can to The Company, but as little as it cares about the art in its possession, it may care even less about people like Becca.
The art continues to evolve throughout the evening, becoming more, pushing the guests and themselves further until the Haus is in an all out frenzy.
That’s when the metaphorical sledgehammer comes back out to make sure you know that art can’t be hamstrung by a corporation. Instead, it can take on its own meaning and push back against the systems that may try to keep it for themselves, that try to suck it dry of what makes it interesting.
Yet, even in doing so, it doesn’t come down on those who may have to make art within those systems. Corporate art is not inherently devoid of meaning, Haus argues. There are actual artists creating actual art (and in Haus of Creep the art begins to stand in for the artist) that can have meaning or find new meaning with the people that see it even if it’s in a more commercial location. All the better if it’s something dangerous that people may not have been exposed to before. Indeed, that may be the very thesis behind Creep and Just Fix It, which regularly work with huge brands, but bring their signature flair and fellow artists along with them.
Selfie museums and Instagram palaces made for the easy initial target here because they are so often soulless, corporate “art.” Haus of Creep reaches beyond that though and posits that as long as there’s a beating heart behind the creation, a point beyond the almighty dollar, art won’t be constrained.
Haus of Creep runs on various nights through November 3. Tickets are $69.
Get a peek inside the Haus of Creep with our episode of Inside Immersive.
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