Haus of Ruckus' “Spooky Pete,” November 11 through 20

Friday, November 11, through Sunday, November 20

The Mockingbird on Main, 320 North Main Street, Davenport IA

Running at Davenport venue the Mockingbird on Main November 11 through 20, Spooky Pete is the latest blast of ingenuity, hilarity, puppetry, and sure-to-be-glorious WTF-ery by the Haus of Ruckus team of T. Green and Calvin Vo, whose previous ventures for the venue have include the slacker-buddy comedies “Jacques”-alope, “Pants” Labyrinth, and Random Access Morons. It's the pair's first Mockingbird show not to feature, at their center, Vo's and Green's comedic alter egos Johnny and Fungus. It's also a haunted-house story, and is consequently landing, as stated on the production company's Facebook page, “Just in time to be late for Halloween.”

Explaining the intentional tardiness, Green says, “'Spooky Pete' is a fake ghost story I told some friends four years ago as a joke. And then it sort of became a joke concept: 'What if we made that a play?' And then after we started Haus of Ruckus, I was sweeping the floor before a 'Jacques'-alope' performance and thought of the slogan 'Just in time to be late for Halloween.' But the idea for [the post-seasonal starting date] actually came from both of us being people who really like the holiday, and knowing people who really like the holiday. There's always that bit of disappointment after Halloween is over.”

“Oh come on,” counters Vo. “I love All Saints' Day.”

“But after All Saints' Day,” Green retorts, “there's still a whole bunch of November, and you need something to tide you over 'til Thanksgiving. So yeah, we wanted to appeal to those people who also aren't ready for Halloween to be over on November 1, and who want to hold onto that campy horror concept a little while longer.

“And also,” he adds, “it fit into our schedule.”

Haus of Ruckus' latest, says Green, “is basically the story of five college students going into a haunted mansion that belongs to this ghoul named Spooky Pete and all of his friends, and they sort of split off into their own individual story lines where we kind of explore self-discovery and queer identity. There's a love story there, and there's some fun adventure exploring this scary mansion location … . It's all thrown together with this sort of drag lens over it. And it's also a sort of critique of queerness being used in horror films to make characters seem scary, and exploring how these 'scary' Halloween characters maybe aren't how they appear.”

Vo adds that while Spooky Pete's running length is “gonna stick to our hour-and-a-half format that works,” the production is also “definitely going to be one of our bigger shows. There's a lot going on in it, and when we started designing, the set was one of the first things to get finished in the pre-production phase. I mean, the Johnny/Fungus shows basically had modular set pieces that moved around and sort of established 'This might be a this, this might be a that.' But with Spooky Pete, there's more of a concrete idea, and because it takes place in a haunted mansion (designed by Becky Meissen), the haunted mansion itself very feels very much like part of the show's whole character.”

With this new Haus of Ruckus endeavor also partly inspired, as Vo says, boasting “Scooby-Doo tropes, and Universal monster-movie tropes, and nods to campy '60s and '70s variety hours,” Spooky Pete is Green's and Vo's first Mockingbird offering in which they won't be portraying the figures they've become locally famed for. It's a break they're both enjoying.

“As we were writing it,” says Green, “we realized it didn't quite fly off the page like the Johnny-and-Fungus shows did. Because in the the work we had done with the Johnny-and-Funguses, we sort of established how these characters interacted with the world and how they interacted with each other early on. But there was something really fun in being able to write scenes and character interactions that we don't get to do in Johnny/Fungus plays. Having different characters interacting with different characters, and sort of figuring out what was a Johnny/Fungus trope and what is a Haus of Ruckus trope, and what can we do that sets this world apart from the Johnny/Fungus world.”

Says Vo, “A big thing that we talked about when we were writing this was the question of 'What does it look like when we're playing characters who aren't Johnny and Fungus?' Because we've been playing those roles for, like, a year, and I really enjoy Johnny as a character. But there are some people who have only seen me in a tie-dye T-shirt being a little curmudgeon, you know? We wanted to see how I could maybe play lots of different little things. Because I really enjoy that – being that guy in a production who comes in and plays lot of weird little bits. So we get to go in directions we don't normally go in Johnny-and-Fungus stuff.”

Adds Green of his stage alter ego, “There's something about Fungus that's very autobiographical and very much like the character I play in normal conversation when I'm telling jokes. So it's really fun, in the Haus of Ruckus, world, to do the work of exploring a brand-new character again.”

Joining Green and Vo in the Spooky Pete ensemble are a number of longtime Haus of Ruckus collaborators: Amelia Fischer, Andres Garcia, Sarah Goodall, Bella Kuta, Emma Regnier, Max Robnett, Jo E. Vasquez, and Keenen Wilson. And making his Haus of Ruckus debut is Alexander Richardson, the area actor, designer, director, and author whose plays Your Better Self and Their Town, along with his new adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's An Enemy of the People, have all been staged at the Mockingbird over the last 12 months.

“He's doing really great and is super-fun to work with,” says Vo of Richardson. “And what's nice about Alex is that he's also a playwright, so working through rehearsal as people who write stuff with another actor who writes stuff has been really fun and interesting. There are things we're doing that he's on top of and really gets,”

Regarding Haus of Ruckus' plans post-Spooky Pete, Vo says, “We've floated around a couple of versions of what our 2023 is going to look like, and I think we've sort of settled on some stuff. We're now just finalizing which stories we're doing and in what order, and we've also got some partnerships that we're going to announce, as well. That's all going to get announced pretty soon – when this show is over and I have time to work on the promo material.”

In the meantime, there's the late-for-Halloween run of Spooky Pete, which Green says will boast a number of special tricks and treats for Haus of Ruckus fans and newbies alike.

“For the second weekend, we're going to have a musician who does the music for ComedySportz (name purposely withheld), and he's going to be playing piano for us, which is exciting. And without giving away anything specifically, Calvin is working very hard on some really cool puppets and other cool designs. And the set is really something. I think this is definitely the most set-y set we've ever had.”

Spooky Pete runs in downtown Davenport November 11 through 20, with performances Fridays through Sundays at at 7:34 p.m. sharp, and admission is $10 at the door or through Venmo. For more information, visit TheMockingbirdOnMain.com and Haus of Ruckus on Facebook and Instagram, and reservations are available by e-mailing HausOfRuckusQC@gmail.com.