Chris Fisher is a master of illusion, who has thrilled countless thousands of theatergoers with his spellbinding work on such popular plays as “Back to the Future” and “Harry Potter & The Cursed Child.”
More recently, Fischer drew rave reviews for “Stranger Things: The First Shadow,” which won him — and others involved — the 2025 Special Tony Award for illusions and technical effects.
In other words, he definitely sounds like the right person for the job of brining the sizable chills and jump scares of “Paranormal Activity” to life on the stage.
Bay Area horror movie fans and other brave souls will find out for sure when the play — which is based on the successful found-footage haunted-house film franchise of the same name — takes over A.C.T.’s Toni Rembe Theater from Feb. 19 to March 22. Tickets $25–$130, www.act-sf.org.
“It’s one of the most collaborative projects I have worked on in a long time,” the U.K.-based Fisher marvels during a recent Zoom interview from a theater in London. “What was brilliant about this show — and it’s happening more and more these days — was the opportunity to come in on something right from the very start, before there was a design or anything. That was a massive draw.”
The whole process began when Fisher met up with Chicago playwright Levi Holloway (known for the Broadway play “Grey House) and director Felix Barrett (from the British theater company Punchdrunk).
“We had an initial meeting and we talked about what scared us,” he remembers. “We quickly got this great rapport of just bouncing (ideas) off each other. There was just a click — that we could create something really exciting.”
And they didn’t waste any time getting started.
“I sort of picked on three to five things and said, ‘Right, let’s workshop it,’” Fisher says. “Before we’d even designed the set, we just went into this big warehouse and I got a whole lot of stuff made. And we played — we played for two weeks — and had a brilliant time. We came up with some sequences, a lot of which are still in the show now.”
“Paranormal Activity,” the stage production, premiered at the Courtyard Theatre at Leeds Playhouse in August 2024 and would later transfer to London’s West End, where it’s currently being shown at the lovely Ambassadors Theatre. The show launched a U.S. tour in October, first playing the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles and the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C. before finally setting sights on San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater.
Those heading to the play should know that it’s not a stage version of the 2007 Oren Peli-directed film, a surprise blockbuster hit that cost some $15,000 to shoot and went on to gross a staggering $194 million at the worldwide box office. Nor is it specifically based on any of the follow-up films in this “found footage” franchise, which started out strong and then trailed off decidedly, quality wise, by they time we reached the fourth installment in 2012. (An eighth “Paranormal Activity” film is reportedly set to come out next year.)
Instead, the play is an original story set within the framework of the film series, although no actual scenes/plots/characters have made the transfer from celluloid to the live stage.
Ah, but the kind of jump scares and creepy moments that horror aficionados found so ghastly appealing in the “Paranormal Activity” will still be found, albeit often in altered manners, in the play. One major change is that the film was largely based on CCTV recordings — which caught the things that went bump in the night on video — but that just didn’t work for a stage production.
“We talked a lot about the kind of the camera aspect of it — the CCTV aspect of it — and it’s hard because we were going to have to have lots of TVs around the stage and bits and pieces like that. And as we just started moving along, it didn’t feel right,” Fisher recalls. “You’d have to have these very big screens for everyone to be able to see. Actually, what was more important was what was happening to the couple (in the play), rather than what you were seeing on the screen.”
Another difference between film and theater, obviously, is that the former benefits from being able to use all kinds of different camera angles. While, the theater is more of just a one-shot “widescreen” type of experience.
“You can obviously use camera angles in film to draw in, to pull out, to change direction or anything like that,” says Fisher, adding that there are ways to compensate for that on the live stage. “I talked to the (play’s) characters about misdirection. And, effectively, you use the cast to misdirect or direct an audience to where we need them to look at certain things. So we’re actually using the cast to help create our camera angles to kind of look over here, to come over here, to go there.”
Yet, Fisher knows there’s a fine line to walk when you’re attempting to do horror on the live stage.
“It’s a lot harder doing horror and and scares on stage then I think it is in filming,” he says. “And we analyze this a lot, but you need to be careful that something doesn’t become funny — because it it can sometimes. And it can be a bit hammy.
The answer to the problem, quite often, is that less is more.
“I sort of brought (that concern) to the table and described it as ‘the Jaws effect’ –that seeing the sharks’ fin and hearing the music is scarier than seeing the mechanical head come out of the water and thrashing around,” Fisher says. “So, we use a lot of restraint in the show. You don’t want to go full in with big effect or anything like that straight away.
“You have those moments — and they do it in the films as well — where you sort of almost like peak, and something’s going to happen, and then it stopped and there wasn’t anything. Then on an offbeat, when you just aren’t expecting it, you do pull the rug out — you do something — and then you get that scare moment.”
The creators were able to hone those moments during previews of the play — figuring out which jump scares worked better than others.
“Timing was really critical,” Fisher says. “Creating a good jump scare is all about timing and when you do it and catching people unaware.”
While not divulging any of the particulars — because, really, who wants to spoil the fun? — Fisher does say that he enjoyed coming up with all new illusions to bring the paranormal to the people.
“The Illusions we’ve got on the show, nothing is off the shelf, you know? It’s all bespoke. It’s all completely kind of unique to the show,” he says. “And so, in those scenarios, you never know how something’s going to land and, indeed, is it going to scare? And the fact that it is landing and the fact that people are coming out and getting scared, it feels more exciting for me than probably a lot of shows I’ve done.”
Yet, Fisher knows that the illusions — no matter how impactful they might be — are never enough to fully carry the show.
“The illusion moments are only as good as the rest of the play,” he says. “Because during the rest of the play, you need to be sitting in this kind of very realistic house, and you need to be in this realistic environment — which needs to feel real. And from that, you can create these moments of horror movie jump scares and everything else like that.
“The intricate touches that each member of the creative team has given to the piece as a whole are, I think, what makes the show as brilliant as it is. It’s the passing headlights through the window that make you feel there’s a road outside. It’s the minute little details of sound that just add another layer.”
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