Event

A Memory Palace of Fear

What haunts your house? Eviction? Foreclosure? Mice? Ghosts? A Memory Palace of Fear is a haunted house about housing an immersive theater installation exploring the ways the spaces we call home can turn from refuge to menace, and back again. Employing performance, text, sound, and visual art elements, the project marries an examination of the role of the haunted house in popular culture with research into issues impacting housing stability and fears in general.

These issues can be economic (eviction, foreclosure), environmental (lead poisoning, asbestos), or social (violence and other criminal or criminalized activities). By seeking common ground between the haunted houses of ghost stories and Halloween entertainments and the troubled properties that haunt Chicago, we aim to examine the ways we understand the role of fear as entertainment, how we think about stereotypically scary buildings and neighborhoods, and how no matter their situation our homes can both menace us and keep us safe.

Tours are 30 minutes with a maximum of eight people per tour. The first two tours of each date are kid friendly tours!

Produced by Theater Oobleck, with support from the Social Justice News Nexus program at Medill School of Journalism.