INTERVIEW: LA’s Scariest Stage — Zombie Joe’s ‘Urban Death’ Unmasked

One longtime Los Angeles theater company is using its stage to scare, shock and horrify its audience—and crowds just keep coming back. 

Founded in 1992, Zombie Joe’s Underground Theater Group stages a year-round slate of macabre productions that don’t flinch at content warnings. In its 33 years, the troupe has explored deeply uncomfortable topics—including sexual assault, physical brutality, fetishes, suicide, Holocaust horrors, drug use, and nudity.

“Nothing is too taboo for us as a theater group,” founding artistic director Zombie Joe (known simply as “Zombie”) told the Los Angeles Times in 2019, “and for ‘Urban Death’ and all our shows, we have no opinion on anything.”

Not for the faint of heart (nor the easily triggered), Zombie Joe's nearly productions have built a cult following—especially during the Halloween season. In fact, its annual “Urban Death: Tour of Terror," running October 3 through November 1, draws more patrons to the theater than during the rest of the year combined.

Ranked as one of the "Top 10 Scariest Haunts" in the country by Yelp, the nearly hourlong show delivers a sequence of wordless horror vignettes bookended by two pitch-black, ghoul-filled mazes that guests must navigate to enter and exit the theater.

“Zombie Joe” and Urban Death director Denise Devin stepped out of the darkness to talk with BroadwayWorld about the scares, the actors who bring them to life, and why the experience has a "safe word" for people who may want to opt out.   

Thank you for taking the time to talk with me! I’ll admit: I think I'm too scared to see your show! But before we really get into that, I’d love for you to tell me a little bit about how you got here. 

Zombie: First of all, thanks for having us—we really appreciate it. So Urban Death is Zombie Joe's Underground feeder group—and we've been around since 1992. We're an avant-garde, horror and suspense-based experimental West Coast theater company. We have our own sort of style that we've been developing all these years.  

How’d you two come to work together? 

Zombie: Denise and I met 25 years ago. She was doing a show with Theater Neo, and I basically stole her heart and stole her away to serve the Underground. And we've been together ever since. 

Urban Death: Tour of Terror is your biggest show of the year, right?  

Zombie: Urban Death is our big horror product and franchise. This is our big show of the year that keeps our doors open and really secures our theater. In the month of October, we see people coming from all over the world. In October, we see more people than in all the other eleven months combined. 

Can you describe the show, in a nutshell? 

Zombie: It's like a French-style horror museum that comes to you. And it's wordless, so we cover all language barriers. It's physical theater, and it's very emotional and it's very scary. And we cover all levels of horror—the idea is we'll do maybe 50 short pieces and we’ll partner with the darkness. 

Do you mean the literal darkness?

Denise: It means both. The actual blackout is part of the ethos of the show. And we use it like it’s its own character. But we also mean darkness in the more figurative sense: emotional darkness, panic, terror. 

How long is the show? 

Denise: It’s about a 35 to 40-minute experience. It's a haunt, two mazes, and a 20-minute version of our annual Spring sit-down show.

Do you consider it theater, a haunted attraction, or a combo of both?

Denise: It’s both theater and a haunted attraction. A lot of our fans have never been to the theater before, so they enjoy that part. But first, they walk through a very scary, very dark maze with things that happen. And then we do the sit-down show—then we go through a second, different maze to get back to the outside. 

I want to talk about the performers, because I’m really curious about who they are and if it’s hard to find actors who want to do this kind of thing. 

Denise: Some of our actors have been doing this show almost as long as I have. I was in the original cast 20 years ago, and I'm working with actors whom I've been working with for 10–15 years. 

Are these the same sorts of actors that you might see at something like Universal Studios’ Halloween Horror Nights? 

Denise: We're very different than Universal. But we do have scare actors who come to us, and then they never go back. The difference between our actors and what you might find at other wanted attractions is that we're scare-actors-plus. Like, we're actually theater actors doing theater pieces.  

Tell me a little more about the cast: 

Denise: A lot of them have done many, many shows with us. They are classically trained . . . They are highly trained. They're completely conversant with classical theater, Shakespeare, Molière's Tartuffe, all of that.  

We also have newbies who haven't done much, but are so committed. This happens often with Zombie Joe’s—people come to the theater and they just fall in love with it. They just fall in love with the style of the show, and they just want to be involved. It's a very physical show, so there are safety protocols. We are a theater, and we do know how to do this. 

It sounds really hard to perform in these shows!

Denise: It’s hard because we demand commitment, we demand acting. There aren’t thousands of dollars in animatronics waving at you. It takes a committed theater artist to want to create—they get 30 seconds to a minute for each vignette to create a world, and the story, and that moment of horror. And they get on and get off, so to speak. We wash it out with a blackout and then come into the next picture, so it takes a committed artist. 

What’s different about the show this year? 

Denise: It’s a whole new show. We always feature a classic or two because we've been doing it for so many years, and that helps root the show. It's good for the fans. But by and large, 80 percent of the show is brand new.

What are some of those ‘classic’ pieces of the show that you keep bringing back?  

Zombie: Well, we do all kinds of psychological, self-abuse, and self-loathing characters. The show is scary, but with all the horror, it's also sensuous and funny. We do pure, classic monsters. We do bendy, acrobatic stuff. And there's also dance pieces. 

It sounds amazing, but I think it’s still probably too scary for me! 

Denise: I’ll be honest: It is scary. We are considered the number two scariest attraction in the whole country by Yelp. It’s hard to describe . . . The show isn't all jump scares; it's much more emotional. But it can be triggering.  

Do people touch the guests during the experience? 

Denise: We don't touch you, and I do a whole thing before the show asking people not to touch the creatures. The only caveat to that is that people do get disoriented. We come at you from all angles in the maze. So an actor might gently guide someone who's having trouble navigating.  

I’ve read that your shows can really push the boundaries—sometimes even to a level that might offend or trigger people. Tell me about that. 

Zombie: As far as any religious or cultural boundaries, it's all entertainment for us. We have no opinion on any of it, and that allows us to be free to practice. For us, a lot of it equals freedom—freedom in the theater, freedom to be who we are and to express ourselves. So we're able to cross all those lines, and it's all considered art for us. 

OK, but give me some specifics. What lines are you crossing? Are we talking rape? Suicide? Nudity? 

Denise: Yes, and we do have a trigger warning. I meet every single guest before they go in—and we see thousands. I'm there shaking everybody's hands, and I make it clear that we're scary and we're adults—because sometimes people bring their kids, and we're, like, I'm so sorry. You can't come in. 

Can you elaborate? 

Denise: The problem is that Urban Death is very hard to describe. It is a series of vignettes done in a grand Guignol French style, which is animated faces, extreme contortion of body. How I like to describe it to new actors is that we're finding the moment of horror. The moment of horror in a rape, for instance, is not the rape; it's the moment when you know you're going to be raped. That moment when you're on that dark street and there's someone behind you and you realize that there's no way out. We work to find whatever that dark moment is. Sometimes it's violent, sometimes it's sad. We do depict suicides, but every show doesn't have all of this stuff. 

Can you give me an example of one of the more extreme acts in the show?  

Denise: Rope girl would be one of our extreme ones—where a girl comes running out with a rope on her neck. It's a rope that is hidden in the bowels, so you don't see it, and she comes out with a rope on her neck, obviously beaten, and she screams in terror. We time it so it hits right to the foot of the audience, so she's literally right over the first row and then she's suddenly jerked and pulled back off stage, screaming. That's one of our classics, and most people are quite shocked and quite frightened by it. 

What’s it like behind the scenes for the actors to do such horrific scenes?  

Zombie: Our company is chock full of warm, supportive, super-talented, International Artists. We really support each other in our craft and streamline the direction of our artistry, if that makes any sense. 

What if you go in and then you want to leave? Is there a safe word? 

Denise: Yes, there is a safe word. The ghouls are very experienced . . . We have protocols in place. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen: People do get triggered and we do—like every other haunt in the city—occasionally have to usher someone out. 

How many shows do you do a night?

Denise: Six on Friday, seven on Saturday. 

[To Denise] You've had a lot of experience directing other sorts of shows before this. How different is it to direct this show, compared to more traditional theater experiences?

Denise: For me. It's not that different, to be honest. I used to do a whole bunch of Shakespeare . . . The commitment is the same. It's the show content that's different. If you're going to do Shakespeare, you're going on a wild ride because it's almost like a foreign language to a modern-day audience. It's huge stakes. There's nothing small about a Shakespeare play. It's life and death. And that's Urban Death: It's huge emotion. It's life and death. There's a big commitment.

The only thing that's different about our shows is that there are no words. But most people come and see the show and they don't even realize that there were no words because there's sound, there's noise, there's music, and there's dance. There's funny—people are laughing—there's the audience. But there's no actual dialogue back and forth.

Last question, and I know we’ve talked about this, but just how scary is this show? 

Denise: That's a tough one, because everyone's different. It isn't for everyone, admittedly, but everyone is grateful that they see it once. Most people, even when they say, ‘Oh, we're going to be triggered,’ are glad they made it through because they had an experience they won't have otherwise. 

Urban Death Tour of Terror runs Oct. 3 through Nov. 1 at Zombie Joe’s Underground Theater, 4850 Lankershim Avenue in North Hollywood. Tickets are $24 in advance and $28 at the door. Tickets at www.zombiejoes.com. Ages 18 and up only. 

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