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Imagine you're at the theater enjoying a civilized evening of culture, featuring a classic play by Tennessee Williams.

Suddenly you hear pounding and screaming in the distance. Murmurs turn to disturbed whispers in the audience as even the actors are distracted by the growing noise.

Suddenly the lobby doors break open and you are confronted by a horde of zombies, dripping blood and crying out for fresh brains!

This, my friend, is all too real a concern for 

"The last time it happened during a performance was in 2006 when we were performing, fittingly, 

 - about Typhoid Mary. We had to lock the doors because zombies were trying to come into the lobby, " remembers Antenucci.

A participant from a past edition of Minneapolis' annual Zombie Pub Crawl

 has always occurred on the first weekend in October, happily when TRP was in between shows. Still the theater, located at Seven Corners, suffers damage each year: smears of fake blood on the billboards, on the building, and the overwhelming smell of urine in the alley behind the theater.

"We have to hose down everything," says Antenucci.

This year the Zombie Pub Crawl moved to the second weekend in October, right on opening weekend of TRP's production of 

Meanwhile, the crawl has grown from 150 zombies in 2005 to what some claim was 15,000 flesh eaters in 2011.

"If we were doing a big loud musical, that might be one thing," chuckled Antenucci. "But screams for brains and pounding on car hoods doesn't quite go with Tennessee Williams."

opens Friday, will go dark Saturday for the Zombie Pub Crawl, and will resume on Sunday.

Arts and Culture

State of the Arts Blog

Marianne Combs

Author

Theatre in the Round Players will go dark Saturday night, rather than have it's production of Tennessee Williams' Summer and Smoke be interrupted by zombies howling for brains.

Threat of zombies forces theater to cancel show

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