Designed to Save: Scenography and ideology in Hell House

Abstract

Indebted to the American tradition of the Halloween haunted house, Hell House presents the Pentecostal Christian version of a horror narrative, depicting the terrors waiting in the afterlife for those who sin. Consisting of seven key scenes, which address homosexuality, drunk driving, abortion, teen suicide, the occult and representations of Hell and Heaven, Hell House uses its performance as an evangelical tool. The event draws on aspects of immersive and promenade theatre and thus intertwines scenography and ideology, where each aspect of design is geared towards a singular goal: saving its audience from eternal torment in Hell.

This article will examine the importance of staging and set in Hell House performance, and their relationship to the aim of the event. Particular attention will be paid to what its dramaturgy is intended to do, as Hell Houses ultimately use a created environment to represent a spiritual reality, in which both Heaven and Hell should be considered very real. The article will use the Hell House Kit, a do-it-yourself manual created for staging the event, to examine the connection between ideology and design that underpins the Hell House event, and the tensions this creates for representations of truth and reality in performance.

Notes

1 The current website for the Assemblies of God Church can be found at www.godestiny.org and still shows the importance of drama for its outreach efforts: https://bit.ly/385wS52, accessed 8 May 2020. The quotation used here is taken from the old website, which can be accessed via the Internet Archive: https://bit.ly/2HUjvd8, accessed 8 May 2020.

2 The Hell House Kit (or HHK for short), used throughout the essay as a reference, is a primary resource obtained from the Assemblies of God Church and Pastor Keenan Roberts. The Kit was created to offer other churches and religious communities an opportunity and the resources to stage their own production of Hell House. Pagination in-text refers to the page of the Word document that forms part of the Kit, acting as a "How To" resource.

3 The information about Judgement House used in this paragraph can be found on its website and related pages: https://bit.ly/3jO8EhX, accessed 8 May 2020.

4 See Bivins 2008: 132–6 and Hoedt 2012: 253–5 for a more detailed history of each of the three events.

5 Information about these scenes can be found on the websites describing the HHK, as well as on the old order page: https://bit.ly/2TJgxLb and https://bit.ly/3oRRlQY, accessed 8 May 2020.

6 https://bit.ly/3kS41ou, accessed 8 May 2020.