WYLFWT? Team Members Featured in Pekin Times

Team Members SpicyMan, Mortis, and myself were seen in the Pekin Times, a local paper. In the picture, from the left to right it is myself (5iN), SpicyMan, and Mortis!

Original Article

Former and current Illinois Central College students Justin Franks, Josh Evans, Rod Suits, Stephanie Hogue and Adam Hart attended the opening of "The Zombie" dressed up as the characters in the play being performed at the Performing Arts Center on the ICC campus Friday night. Photo by Robert Stoops / Times staff

Zombies rule at ICC performance

By Nick Vogel
Published: Monday, October 1, 2007 2:39 PM CDT
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EAST PEORIA - The “zombie genre,” much like a zombie, now serves as slave to the many whims of its mad creators.

Since the film “Night of the Living Dead,” countless movies have been made using zombies to both frighten and amuse.

“The Zombie,” playing through Oct. 7 at ICC's East Peoria campus, is a fun but tangled play that uses zombies to both frighten audience members and make them laugh within a two-hour period.

The play - which takes place inside a house wasted and worn by time - opens as Sheriff Billy Jim helps a beautiful, illegal alien named Margo hide in the house from immigration authorities.

The innocent and naive Margo enters having no idea what she's in for, like the audience members, who have entered the play having no idea what to expect themselves.

The story flirts with social commentary via the use of Margo, who turns to the power and money obsessed zombiemaker “Doctor” Samedi for help. Later, when Samedi's true motivation for creating zombies is revealed, the play takes advantage of another chance to comment on illegal immigration.

Overall, however, the play shies away from ever getting too politically heavy.

The story goes like this: A group of three spring-break-bound youth get their car stuck in the mud near the frightening old house. Looking for shelter from a storm, they sneak inside.

It's not too long before they meet the mad, flamboyant, eccentric Samedi (played by Dennis Martens) who insists the kids spend the night. What follows is a true night of horror complete with piercing screams and zombies constantly lurking behind who knows what corner.

In an unexpected dance performance, Samedi shows off his zombies by making them dance in a well-choreographed and successful performance that runs the risk of imitating the iconic dancing zombies from Michael Jackson's “Thriller” video, but manages to stay wholly original.

The dance number ends and goes away and, unfortunately, there is nothing else as entertaining for the rest of the play.

Samedi's consistently evil villainy leads the story through scenes involving plot twist after plot twist as he tries to manipulate nearly every situation in the play.

The soap opera becomes hard to unravel and threatens to slow the story's pace.

“This house, it breathes evil,” Sister Matrisse, the Creole housekeeper, says once during the play.

And it does breathe evil, but in a spooky and creative way. The set design sucks the audience into the play's creepy-old-house-near-a-dark-scary-swamp setting.

The gray and lifeless twisted trees that surround the house have so much character themselves, one can almost hear the evil being exhaled.

Add to that the haunting sound effects, great makeup and costumes, and what you have is a fun and smart play with thrilling visual elements that create a night not too unlike a trip to a haunted house.