‘I want to live in your mouth.’ Makes Childhood Horrors Real (The NoPro Review)
David Ruzicka and Eric Vosmeier’s immersive show is a creepy, nightmarish, good time
I’m not particularly spoiler-averse, but I want to live in your mouth. really is one of those shows that benefits from knowing basically nothing going in. It trades on childhood nightmares, it’s horror-themed, and there are puppets. Got it? Good. Now go.
I can’t file a forty word review though, so let’s dive into this weird, wonderful, little show some more.
I want to live in your mouth. asks you to return to a time when you were younger. When you weren’t sure what was under the bed. When you didn’t know what was living in the closet. When you felt something lurking, hiding, creeping just out of sight in the darkness. David Ruzicka and Eric Vosmeier have bottled that childhood horror up and distilled it across their immersive experience.
Again, last chance before we get into it. If you’re at all interested double check the content advisories (if that’s a thing you do) and just buy a ticket. This show is exceptionally well crafted and won’t lose much if you have some idea of what may happen because of that, but you’ll have more fun going in cold.
The show opens with a simple scene; you, alone in a room, sitting on a chair holding a stuffed animal, with a recorded voice talking to you. The room is reminiscent of a kid’s bedroom, a bookshelf with some trophies, some art on the walls, and an unsettling, impenetrable darkness along the edges of the room. This sequence looks much different than what follows, but it establishes a specific tone that carries through the rest of the experience. Is there something just prodding at the edges of your brain or is there actually something there?
There isn’t much in the way of plot, really I want to live your mouth. is something of a tone poem. It sets up a certain atmosphere and lets the audience feel those reverberations over the course of its 20 minute run time. It takes those things that kids are afraid of; in the closet, under the bed, the kind of horror and scares that impressionable children will pick up on and recreates those feelings.
Part of the reason it’s so successful at establishing that atmosphere is a strong sense of design and aesthetic. Taking place in a transformed and nearly unrecognizable Zombie Joe’s Underground Theater, each space you enter gets weirder, darker, and further from reality. While it’s all decked out in a way that a lot of immersive shows aren’t, in terms of set and lighting effects, there’s a decidedly low-fi thing going on. Maybe that’s because of the puppets, or the way they pull off some of the gags (if they told me they used a fishing pole and line for one of them, I’d believe it), or even what the closet looks like once you get there. Whatever the case, it totally works and, at the same time gives off a fitting, distinct vibe of 80s children’s horror type movies (I got a strong feeling of Little Monsters, some Dark Crystal, and a dash of, like, Beetlejuice).
As for the actual horror of the experience, it utilizes that atmosphere it’s created to instill a sense of dread and creepiness. There are some scares, but mostly, they let your mind do all of the work. Again, their design works wonders here because there’s just enough light in the space to see everything you need to while also keeping plenty juuuuuust out of sight, so you’re not sure if there’s something in the room with you or not. It doesn’t exactly feel like a Creep LA show, but it does hit a similar sweet spot of creepy, scary, and horror, which isn’t surprising given Ruzicka and Vosmeier’s backgrounds.
The way the show is laid out relies chiefly on one actor as the point of contact for the one audience member. In the performance I saw, Curtis Scott played host for the evening. His performance becomes an echo of the rooms and shifts the further you go into the experience; he becomes more and more unglued as he’s consumed by the nightmares that are present. There’s a sequence near the middle where he, along with the blend of puppetry and atmosphere, truly stands out though. It’s tough to describe what I’ll call the “brother scene” without giving away too much, but Scott ramps up the creep factor to the perfect level while working in concert with a behind-the-scenes puppeteer. I can still hear his voice in my head almost a week later.
I want to live in your mouth. makes the most of all of its various elements, from horror and creep level to design and acting. Most of all it makes for something that’s outright fun by taking the audience back to a common childhood time and place. And the nightmares there just want to live in your mouth. You should let them.
I want to live in your mouth. runs Thursdays-Sundays through May 5. Tickets are $48 including fees.
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