Twilight Zone Live on Stage at the Dark Room Theater

They’re doing it again. For the sixth year running, The Dark Room Theater presents a 4-week stand that includes 8 stage remakes of original Twilight Zone TV episodes. Each weekend a different pair of episodes is featured, plus live on-stage commercials and a different Rod Serling impersonator each weekend as well.

Shows run Friday & Saturday at 8pm and Sundays at 3pm. The show opens this weekend and runs through March 29th.

I’m more than a little familiar with The Dark Room because I’ve been in numerous shows there, including a few of the earlier Twilight Zone seasons. The TZone shows are a lot of fun because they have both the classic trappings of Mr Serling’s wonderful TV show, which originally ran from 1959-1964, and the ingenious manic energy of fans making an homage. Some follow true to the original, while others take the original in wholly new directions. Expect a liberal dose of laugh and some suspense (depending on the episode). This year there’s one that claims to combine four classic episodes into one. We’ll see!

The Dark Room is a 50ish-seat black box theater, one of the more active venues in the de facto theater district scattered throughout San Francisco’s Mission (others include The Marsh, The Brava, The Rhinoceros, Theatre Artaud, and Intersection for the Arts).

Dark Room shows are split between stand-up or sketch comedy, pop-culture adaptations from TV or the Big Screen to the small low-budget stage, and refugees from public access television. Not to mention the Bad Movie Night film hecklage.