Are You Experienced?

Listen to me talk about about immersive theater and interactive art with Charley Layton on his Neo Bohemia podcast. The theme of the podcast is "experience.

I was interviewed in The New York Times.

Ziegfeld Midnight Frolic

I just realized that I hadn't posted here in over a year. Yes, I have been that busy. I want to post all about my Ziegfeld Midnight Frolic show, but instead visit the gorgeous website here.

Happy Birthday to me!

I had a milestone birthday on October 24th, 2014. When I was a little girl my birthdays were usually Halloween themed. In keeping with this tradition I chose to be a life-size, edible Barbie cake this year. I invited 100 of my favorite people over to my new Manhattan apartment and we celebrated love, friendship, creativity and getting older (and yes, much wiser). The chocolate salted caramel cake was beautifully made by Michelle at Haute So Sweet. It was delicious (and I don't normally like cake). These fantastic photographs were taken by Maxine Nienow and my makeup was done by Susan D. Simons.  Bespoke drinks were made by Bootleg Greg.

Lilliput, Works of art from Cynthia von Buhler’s The Dollhouse Museum (MyMicroGallery --Milan, Italy)

Lilliput is the first land that Lemuel Gulliver visits in the book Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift. The inhabitants, though human in form, are only six inches tall. Thus, the artwork in the show is in 1:12 scale, the size of most dollhouses. The curator Cynthia von Buhler (http://www.cynthiavonbuhler.com) builds dollhouses for her books and plays and is in the process of creating a New York City dollhouse museum which will house tiny artworks by renowned artists. Each artist in Lilliput was given a small frame to create unique art for this exhibit.

Artists: Anita Kunz, Cathie Bleck, Kathy Osborn, Walter Sickert, Dean Haspiel, Christina Carrozza, Molly Crabapple, Silent James, Esther Westwood, Katelan Foisy, Jen Ferguson, Cynthia von Buhler, Rita J. King, Zoë Williams, Aaron Lazar, Pamela Martin, Logan Riley, Bibiana, Scott Bakal, David Mack,  Melissa Dowell, Michelle Vaughan, Paul Weiner, Dana McDonald and Kat Mon Dieu.

Curated by Cynthia von Buhler, Organized by Stefania Carrozzini.

Gallery: MyMicroGallery, Milan, Italy  (owned by Stefania Carrozzini, International curator and art critic).

SPEAKEASY DOLLHOUSE, NEW YORK CITY’S INDIE IMMERSIVE THEATRE HIT CELEBRATES ITS THIRD ANNIVERSARY

"Groundbreaking immersive theater."

- Backstage

"No ordinary theater experience."

- The Wall Street Journal

"An ornately turned-out, unique, and well-produced experience.”

- Flavorpill

"Thrilling and delighting all of the senses."

- The Huffington Post

“An ingenious project jam-packed with creativity."

- Show Business Weekly

STAGEWORKS MEDIA

PRESENTS

CYNTHIA VON BUHLER’S

SPEAKEASY DOLLHOUSE

NEW YORK CITY’S INDIE IMMERSIVE THEATRE HIT

CELEBRATES ITS THIRD ANNIVERSARY

TICKETS NOW ON SALE THROUGH DECEMBER 13^TH

Based on a true NYC murder case, SPEAKEASY DOLLHOUSE

immerses audience in a surreal, Prohibition-era time capsule

featuring live jazz, burlesque, mobsters, moonshine and more.

Transporting audiences to an era of mobsters, moonshine, and murder, Cynthia von Buhler’s SPEAKEASY DOLLHOUSE, one of the city's most unique, interactive, and surreal theatre experiences, proudly celebrates its two-year anniversary this month.  Performing to sold-out audiences since October 2011, SPEAKEASY DOLLHOUSE brings an actual unsolved Prohibition-era murder to life in the downtown building that once served as mobster Meyer Lansky’s hangout. SPEAKEASY DOLLHOUSE is performed weekly (Saturdays at 5:00PM) at “Spano’s Club” at “Spano’s Club” (a.k.a. The Back Room) located at 102 Norfolk St. (near Delancey St.). Tickets (advance only and starting at $55.00) are available by calling 1-800-838-3006 or online at brownpapertickets.com.

SPEAKEASY DOLLHOUSE was created by artist and author Cynthia von Buhler, whose Italian immigrant grandfather, a speakeasy owner named Frank Spano, was shot and killed on a Manhattan street in 1935.

Though the shooter was caught, his case was inexplicably dismissed, leaving the question of motive forever unanswered. Long haunted by the mystery, von Buhler, whose mother was born the day her grandfather died, began interviewing family members about the killing and scouring autopsy reports, police records, and court documents. Inspired by a 1940s investigative technique called "nutshell studies," von Buhler first recreated the crime scene in an elaborate dollhouse diorama (which can be explored on location during each performance).

Von Buhler brought her miniature set to life in SPEAKEASY DOLLHOUSE, which was first intended to be a one-night theatrical staging (via a successful Kickstarter campaign). It has since become a hot underground theater ticket and has extended its run repeatedly over the past three years.

The SPEAKEASY DOLLHOUSE experience begins with a series of emails featuring actual 1935 news articles, court documents, and autopsy reports. Audience members also receive special instructions to show up dressed for a 1930’s night on the town at a secret address, including the password they will need to enter. Upon arrival, an audience member has their palm read by a fortune teller, and is assigned a role ranging from shooting a mobster to aiding in an autopsy.  Once they step through the tiny door, they are transported into a perfect replica of a speakeasy, where they can eat cannoli, sip hooch disguised in coffee cups, play cards with gangsters, enjoy burlesque performances – and witness a shooting, funeral, murder investigation, and trial.

Each show explores a different motive behind the murder, from jealousy over a suspected affair to a Mafia hit. As audience members meander through a speakeasy bar, a private alleyway, a bakery, and more, they are privy to conversations and whispered snippets from cast members about the victim's marital infidelities, mob connections, and other clues. The piece is constantly evolving based on new scenarios sparked by spontaneous interactions between cast members and guests, who are encouraged to become full-fledged participants in the unfolding drama.

“SPEAKEASY DOLLHOUSE is more than just a play – it is a time capsule that transports audiences to the scene of a riveting crime and then invites them to live fully in that world, erasing the boundary between themselves and the performers," said von Buhler.

The cast of SPEAKEASY DOLLHOUSE includes Pasha Pellosie in the starring role as Frank Spano, Nino Giaimo (Uncle Nino from MTV’s “Jersey Shore” and “The Show with Vinny”) as undertaker Dominick Grimaldi, burlesque star Kat Mon Dieu as Lena Doino, jazz musician Howard Fishman as bandleader Henry Azelrod, and soprano Katie Kat as Millie Nelba.

SPEAKEASY DOLLHOUSE has attracted a roster of guest performers that has included bestselling author Neil Gaiman, actress Alison Wright, actor/singer Euan Morton, musician Amanda Palmer, downtown theatre icon Edgar Oliver, and others. New guest performers will be announced shortly.

SPEAKEASY DOLLHOUSE is presented by Stageworks Media. It is performed on Saturdays at 5 PM (5 – 7:30 PM) at “Spano’s Club” (a.k.a. The Back Room) located at 102 Norfolk St. (near Delancey St.).

Tickets to SPEAKEASY DOLLHOUSE are now available for performances through December 13^th. Tickets are available in advance only (prices start at $55; Packages and VIP tables are available. Tickets can be purchased by phone at 1-800-838-3006 or online at brownpapertickets.com.

For inquires, call 212-960-8323, or email info@stageworksmedia.com.

Visit: www.speakeasydollhouse.com.

Speakeasy Dollhouse: The Brothers Booth opens on March 1, 2014.

Tickets and information.

Stageworks Media

Presents

Cynthia von Buhler's

Speakeasy Dollhouse: 

The Brothers Booth

Directed by Wes Grantom

Written by Cynthia von Buhler

 with additional material by Mat Smart

Long-running immersive theater piece SPEAKEASY DOLLHOUSE

Starts a new chapter . . .

This time delving into the sibling rivalry between

John Wilkes and Edwin Booth.

At The Players Club, 16 Gramercy Park South

Three Special Monthly Performances

Saturdays: March 1^st, April 5^th, and May 3^rd at 8:00 pm

Stageworks Media is pleased to announce Speakeasy Dollhouse: The Brothers Booth by Cynthia von Buhler.  A new chapter to Ms. von Buhler’s Speakeasy Dollhouse, which has over the past two years become one of the city's most unique, interactive, and surreal theatre experiences, Speakeasy Dollhouse: The Brothers Booth brings von Buhler’s unique brand of immersive theater to the legends of John Wilkes and Edwin Booth.  Directed by Wes Grantom (Eager to Lose at Ars Nova), Speakeasy Dollhouse: The Brothers Booth will play monthly performances (on the first Saturday of the month) at The Players Club (16 Gramercy Park South) beginning in March 2014.  For tickets and more information, visit www.speakeasydollhouse.com

Speakeasy Dollhouse: The Brothers Booth is an immersive time-traveling theatrical experience, set in the renowned Players Club -- the former home of Edwin Booth -- which explores the sibling rivalry between Edwin and John Wilkes Booth.  Set in 1919, the various characters presented in Speakeasy Dollhouse: The Brothers Booth include John Drew (the then-president of The Players Club) and John Singer Sargeant, as well as the ghosts of Edwin and John Wilkes Booth.  Like the original, Speakeasy Dollhouse: The Brothers Booth also features live jazz, moonshine and burlesque.

According to Speakeasy Dollhouse creator Cynthia von Buhler, “My research on the Booth family has led me to believe that Abraham Lincoln was murdered as a result of sibling rivalry, and not because of John Wilkes’ love of the confederacy. Edwin Booth, a staunch Lincoln supporter, was honored by the president -- and even saved Lincoln’s son Robert from being crushed by a train shortly before the president’s assassination.  Speakeasy Dollhouse: The Brothers Booth encourages audiences to roam Edwin Booth's former mansion in search for the truth. Utilizing Shakespearean themes, longtime conspiracy theories, and surreal vignettes, Speakeasy Dollhouse: The Brothers Booth weaves together a story of the brothers' troubled lives.”

Artist and author Cynthia von Buhler is the creator of Speakeasy Dollhouse, an immersive theatrical hit that explores the murder of von Buhler’s Italian immigrant grandfather, Frank Spano.  A speakeasy owner, Spano was shot and killed on a Manhattan street in 1935.  Though the shooter was caught, his case was inexplicably dismissed, leaving the question of motive forever unanswered. Long haunted by the mystery, von Buhler, whose mother was born the day her grandfather died, began interviewing family members about the killing and scouring autopsy reports, police records, and court documents. Inspired by a 1940s investigative technique called "nutshell studies," von Buhler first recreated the crime scene in an elaborate dollhouse diorama (which can be explored on location during each performance).  Von Buhler brought her miniature set to life in Speakeasy Dollhouse, which was first intended to be a one-night theatrical staging (via a successful Kickstarter campaign). It has since become a hot underground theater ticket, going from monthly performances to weekly performances as it consistently sold out, and extended its run repeatedly over the past two years.

Speakeasy Dollhouse: The Brothers Booth is the first show of its kind to be staged at The Players Club, which was founded in 1888 by Edwin Booth, America's pre-eminent Shakespearean actor, and 15 other incorporators (including Mark Twain and General William Tecumseh Sherman).  Located in a Greek Revival townhouse facing historic Gramercy Park, modeled after London's famed Garrick Club, The Players was the first American club of its kind.  Its purpose:  "The promotion of social intercourse between members of the dramatic profession and the kindred professions of literature, painting, architecture, sculpture and music, law and medicine, and the patrons of the arts . . ." Today, leaders from a variety of professions in the arts, business, and commerce enjoy The Players' unique spirit of conviviality and discourse.  Edwin Booth's bedroom remains on a top floor of the club, undisturbed since his passing in 1893.  2014 marks the 125^th anniversary of The Players Club. 

Cynthia von Buhler’s Speakeasy Dollhouse: The Brothers Booth, directed by Wes Grantom, will be presented at Edwin Booth's mansion, The Players Club (16 Gramercy Park South) monthly on the following Saturdays in 2014:  Saturday, March 1^st at 8pm; Saturday, April 5^th at 8 pm; and Saturday, May 3^rd at 8 pm.  Tickets (advance only) are priced at $75 (general admission) and $125 (VIP, which includes exclusive access beyond the staircase to the third floor, VIP-only scenes, and lounge and cocktail service).  Tickets are now available by visiting www.speakeasydollhouse.com.

Speakeasy Dollhouse Featured in July's American Theater Cover Story

Speakeasy Dollhouse is featured in the July/August cover story of American Theater magazine by Diep Tran. Tran was given the role of the police sketch artist in the play. Here are three of the six pages:

Three pages are missing here. We will be linking to the full article soon.

The Wall Street Journal Visits Speakeasy Dollhouse

Photo by Claudio Papapietro for The Wall Street Journal

Kat Mon Dieu and Lillet St. Sunday perform at the ‘Speakeasy Dollhouse.’

The Wall Street Journal, NY Culture

Mobsters and Murder on The Lower East Side

by Nell Alk

From an opera singer belting it out in a barber-shop-meets-bakery to a birth to an unsolved death—which both occurred on the same day—there is little down time in “Speakeasy Dollhouse,” a recurring re-enactment of a Prohibition-era murder mystery on the Lower East Side.

“There’s constantly something happening,” said Cynthia von Buhler, the creator of this immersive and somewhat secretive gig. “I don’t want there to be lulls. If you’re downstairs, something’s happening. If you’re upstairs, something’s happening.”

The murdered man, Frank Spano, is based on Ms. von Buhler’s real-life grandfather, who was killed the same day as her mother was born, in 1935. “Speakeasy Dollhouse” was born from Ms. von Buhler’s obsession with his death.

“This is a mystery in my family. My mother was very against my looking into it,” she explained, saying sheer curiosity caused her to dig deeper and deeper into the research. “Now [my mom] thinks it’s the greatest thing.”

No ordinary theater experience, the story is brought to life in three hours by rich characters—including mobsters, authorities and burlesque girls—who interact with the crowd as the action unfolds. Held at the Back Room with interiors, tunnels and an alley setting the scene perfectly, ticketholders line up outside on the first Saturday and Monday of every month, supplying a password they’ve been sent via email at the door. Additional emails sent in advance of the event include news articles, court documents and autopsy reports.

“Every show is different from the previous. It’s a working crime lab,” said Josh Weinstein, who assumes the role of German-Jewish-American mobster Dutch Schultz.

“We improvise a lot of it,” added Ms. von Buhler’s husband, Russell Farhang, who also acts as her late grandfather, Frank Spano.

“We’ve made a lot of changes,” explained Ms. von Buhler. “The show has become more surreal. I’m from 1979.” Though surrounded by people dressed in flapper garb, her own outfit included Chuck Taylor sneakers and a tattered Ramones tee, as well as a black wig styled in a bob with bangs.

“I think dressing up is fun, no matter the occasion, so I was all into it,” offered Mark Becker, a handyman and part-time actor himself. “It creates a sort of solidarity among people, and this event was no exception. I noticed lots of folks admiring each others’ costumes. I’m not sure what era my style is from, but I did my best with a paperboy hat and suspenders.”

Though the monthly production launched in October 2011, “It’s kind of underground,” Ms. von Buhler said of her creation, which actually began as a Kickstarter campaign and was meant to run only one night. “It’s been entirely word-of-mouth and social networking,” added Mr. Farhang.

Ms. von Buhler and her team also have an unconventional approach to generating buzz, plastering tiny wooden doors with peepholes throughout Manhattan, each containing a QR code providing smartphone users with additional details.

“It’s selling out,” Ms. von Buhler beamed. “It’s like this thing that started small and just keeps growing.” She continued, “We have people come back who have been to every show. We see many of the same faces.” Maybe that is why it has been extended through June, possibly longer.

Nino Giaimo, perhaps better known as Vinny Guadagnino’s Uncle Nino on “Jersey Shore” and “The Show with Vinny,” acts as the undertaker, Dominick Grimaldi.

“It’s exciting,” Mr. Giaimo said. “It’s fake, but it’s real.” To this Ms. von Buhler chimed in, “It’s more real than reality TV!”

As for his favorite aspect of the performance, Mr. Becker shared his affinity for the macabre. “I was definitely most impressed with the coffin scene, based on what went into it.”

Mr. Farhang later said, “It’s actually pretty traumatic to go through the whole thing—the fighting and the dying. Then to hear people grieve at your funeral? It blew my mind the first time I did it.”

Of the actual casket, Ms. von Buhler said in all seriousness, “I want to be buried in it.” 

The Countess and Her Cats at The Mark Twain House and Museum, Hartford, CT

Exhibition opening: "The Countess & Her Cats" and "Illustrating Twain"

The Mark Twain House and Museum

Thursday, October 18, 5:30 p.m.

We will be showing diorama and dollhouse art from the artist Cynthia von Buhler, author of the children's books "But Who Will Bell the Cats" and "The Cat Who Would Not Come Inside." Von Buhler combines dioramas she constructs with illustration in an imaginative way in her delightful tales. "Illustrating Twain" will feature illustrations by Mark Twain and about Mark Twain. Through January 15.

The opening reception on Oct. 18 is free of charge. The exhibit may be viewed with the purchase of a Mark Twain House tour or for a $5.00 museum-only admission .

and

A Halloween Tea Party with the Countess

The Mark Twain House and Museum

Saturday, October 27, 2:00 p.m.

The younger set are invited to don their Halloween finery for a tea with "Countess" Cynthia von Buhler, author and illustrator of But Who Will Bell the Cats? Kids will feast on tea and sweets, tour our new exhibition The Countess & Her Cats and enjoy a spooky performance by Hartford Children’s Theatre.

Tickets $15 for adults, $10 for children. Call (860) 280-3130.

Speakeasy Dollhouse: Solving Murders With Diorama Crime Scenes

A lecture and workshop with the creator of the Speakeasy Dollhouse book series and off-Broadway immersive play.

***ADVANCE TICKETS AVAILABLE***

Date: Sunday, July 1st

Time: 8:00

Admission: $15

Presented by Atlas Obscura

Artist and author Cynthia von Buhler’s Italian immigrant grandparents, Frank and Mary Spano, owned two speakeasies in the Bronx during Prohibition. In 1935, shortly after Prohibition ended, Frank Spano was shot and killed on the street in Manhattan. When she began her search two years ago nothing was known about the killer, his motive, or a trial. At the time of Frank Spano’s death, innumerable murders went unsolved because evidence was mishandled or downright ignored. In 1936, as a means to better explore these cases and train investigators of sudden or violent deaths to assess visual evidence, Frances Glessner Lee created the Nutshell Studies. These studies consisted of detailed, 1:12 scale dollhouse models that students could examine from every angle. Taking inspiration from the Nutshell Studies, von Buhler created the scenes from her grandfather’s murder and the events leading up to it using her own handmade sets and dolls. Utilizing evidence gathered from autopsy reports, police records, court documents, and interviews in tandem with the dolls and sets, she has pieced together a probable scenario. In this workshop von Buhler will display dollhouse murder dioramas based on actual crimes (including that of her grandfather) for participants to solve. The best sleuth will receive a copy of von Buhler’s book Speakeasy Dollhouse, The Bloody Beginning, an evidence booklet, and two tickets to see the immersive play based upon her findings.

Von Buhler’s paintings have been displayed in numerous galleries and museums around the world. Her work has been reproduced and featured in books, magazines, and newspapers from TIME to The New Yorker. Her interactive sculptures have appeared on Law & Order, Special Victims Unit, where murders were recreated to mimic her art. Von Buhler has published two children’s books with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, The Cat Who Wouldn’t Come Inside and But Who Will Bell the Cats? Both books feature detailed handmade architectural sets and characters created and photographed by von Buhler. Evelyn Evelyn, A Tragic Tale in Two Tomes (Dark Horse Comics), a graphic novel about conjoined twins, was written by Amanda Palmer and Jason Webley and illustrated by von Buhler. The afterword was written by Neil Gaiman. Von Buhler’s Speakeasy Dollhouse play was filmed for an episode of The Science Channel’s show Oddities. Of Dolls & Murder, directed by Susan Marks and narrated by John Waters, is a documentary about Francis Glessner Lee’s crime scene investigation dollhouse dioramas. Marks is currently working on a Of Dolls & Murder sequel based on Speakeasy Dollhouse. For more information, go tocynthiavonbuhler.com or speakeasydollhouse.com.

This is part of the “Atlas Obscura Speakers” series of talks at Observatory.

ADVANCE TICKETS AVAILABLE HERE http://atlasobscura.com/blog/obscura-society-nyc-speakeasy-dollhouse

The New York Times Feature, Speakeasy Dollhouse

The New York Times
"Using a Dollhouse to Reconstruct a Murder, 77 Years Later"
By James Barron
Photograph, doll and set by Cynthia von Buhler.
Cynthia von Buhler figured the simplest way to make sense of a Depression-era murder that intrigued her was to reconstruct the crime scene.

She wanted to be able to look at it from every angle, to manipulate the lamp post on the corner or the sleek sedan parked at the curb. She hoped that recreating everything in minute detail would help her understand why the trigger had been pulled, not once but twice — and whether the racketeer known as Dutch Schultz was somehow behind the deed.

So, she built a dollhouse. The victim’s bakery is on one level, his bar on another and his blood-spattered body in the street outside. All of it was reduced to the scale of a three-and-a-half-foot-high structure with a little neon sign that says “open.”

The victim, Frank Spano, was shot on March 14, 1935. A newspaper article that misspelled his last name as Stano said there were two witnesses, both teenagers: Mr. Spano’s son, Dominick, and a boy whose father was taken into custody.

Ms. von Buhler, an artist and performer who has written and illustrated several children’s books, has spent thousands of hours researching the shooting and what prompted it. There is a deep-seated reason for her fascination with this case: “Frank Spano was my grandfather.”

Ms. von Buhler maintains that Dutch Schultz — real name Arthur Flegenheimer — figured in the story in several ways. She said he had owned a speakeasy near her grandfather’s bar and had bootlegged liquor during Prohibition, as had her grandfather. She also suspected that the gunman, John Guerrieri, a neighbor of her grandfather’s, was Mr. Flegenheimer’s barber.

Mr. Guerrieri admitted to shooting Mr. Spano, but the charges were dismissed a month later. Ms. von Buhler said Hulon Capshaw, the city magistrate who signed the dismissal papers, also had ties to Mr. Flegenheimer.

The accusation from the Manhattan district attorney, Thomas E. Dewey, in 1938, was that Mr. Capshaw had been “intimidated, influenced or bribed” by the Tammany Hall leader James J. Hines or his aides to further Mr. Flegenheimer’s interests. Mr. Capshaw was later removed from the bench and disbarred. Mr. Hines was convicted in 1940 of providing protection to Mr. Flegenheimer’s gangsters.

All that prompted Ms. von Buhler to dig deep into a chapter of family history that had gone unrecorded and unexplored through the generations: “a complicated tale of bootlegging, Mafia, infidelity and murder,” as she described it.

No one who was still alive could explain the motive for the shooting. An unresolved feud? An unpaid debt? Ms. von Buhler’s grandmother, who died in 1983, “took these secrets to her grave,” Ms. von Buhler wrote in an account of her research. Dominick Spano also said nothing before he died.

Ms. von Buhler dredged up the autopsy report on her grandfather and combed the municipal archives for other clues: police reports, court documents, newspaper articles. But she wanted to bring the case to life in a way that tattered, yellowed files could not. She had read about the dollhouse dioramas of crime scenes assembled in the 1940s by Frances Glessner Lee, an heiress turned amateur criminologist. She decided to follow her lead and build the setting in miniature.

Ms. von Buhler bought “the beginnings of the structure” on eBay. She did some remodeling and did the plaster work — “I’m really good with plaster” — and the painting, the intricate tile work and the installation of the tiny furniture herself. She also made all the dolls with clay and real human hair.

She used the dollhouse as the set for a graphic novel, “Speakeasy Dollhouse,” with photographs of the shooting as she imagined it. She even made a separate diorama of a coroner’s office with a tiny body under a tiny sheet on a tiny gurney, with a toe tag bearing her grandfather’s name in tiny letters.

The graphic novel, in turn, became the basis for a theatrical piece, which Ms. von Buhler calls an “immersive play” because she involves the audience in the action. She is also writing a fuller account of the shooting — “pulp nonfiction,” she called it, “a true story told in a pulp-fiction style.”

Along the way, Ms. von Buhler realized that some elements of the information that had been passed down in the family were wrong. The family story was that Mr. Spano had been shot in an apartment in the Bronx, where his club and bakery were, near Arthur Avenue. But the shooting took place in Manhattan, on East 48th Street.

“I think they all knew each other,” she said. “Maybe Dutch Schultz got Guerrieri to do the murder by telling him his wife was having an affair with my grandfather. And then you find out in the end the magistrate was corrupt — and was connected to Dutch Schultz. That’s the clincher. But my grandfather died before that had been revealed.”

Cynthia von Buhler's images from the graphic novel, Speakeasy Dollhouse, The Bloody Beginning:

For additional press about Speakeasy Dollhouse click HERE.

Murder In A Bar

Photograph by Margee Challa New York Post, Theater
"All The World's A Stage"
by Elisabeth Vincentelli

Cynthia von Buhler has the kind of family footnote any writer would kill for: In 1935, her grandfather, Frank Spano, was shot dead on a Manhattan street. Intrigued, von Buhler started researching the case, discovering that Grandpa had ran a couple of speakeasies in The Bronx.

First, the award-winning illustrator did a graphic novel about the story, reconstituting key scenes with dollhouse-like dioramas.

“Then I saw ‘Sleep No More,’ ” she says of the hit riff on “Macbeth,” set in a sprawling Chelsea warehouse, “and thought this could be a great immersive play.”

The result — “Speakeasy Dollhouse” — is performed twice a month at a Lower East Side club. Though the show is scripted and features two dozen actors, there’s also a participatory component as the audience helps investigate the mystery. “We have a complete environment with a private alley where we do the shooting, a bar, a living room where we lay the body,” von Buhler explains. “There’s even an abandoned bakery in the basement, and a secret bedroom that you access through a revolving bookshelf!”

The audience takes it to the next level: “You don’t have to dress up in period costumes, but most people do,” von Buhler says. “It’s a play, but it’s also a party.”

Photograph by Margee Challa

When the Dead Speak, You Had Better Listen

Weird Fiction Review Cynthia von Buhler's Speakeasy Dollhouse by Nancy Hightower

“Remember:

Ignore the warnings your parents gave you as children. Be nosy and talk to strangers.

Wander. If you sit in one place all night you will miss everything.

If you have any questions or need assistance come and find me. I will whisper secrets in your ear.

Cheers,
Cynthia von Buhler

Send from the future.”

I received this email the day before participating in Cynthia von Buhler’s immersive play Speakeasy Dollhouse. A few days before this, I was sent emails containing real documentation from the coroner’s office, as well as newspapers clippings about the murder of Frank Spano, von Buhler’s grandfather. You don’t attend this event, you are immersed in the ongoing attempts to solve the mystery about why Spano was killed. Despite that rather dark description, Speakeasy Dollhouse is actually a festive, carnivalesque affair. I arrived at the location, which is staged in a mobster’s former Lower East Side speakeasy. Two policemen greeted me and engaged in some friendly chatter — but what they really wanted was a password to let them know I was an okay dame. I went down a dark flight of stairs, and then opened a doorway into the holodeck of Star Trek.

Seriously.

Almost everyone was dressed up — I could not differentiate the actors from the audience. The set is elaborate and every detail threw me back in time to a 1920’s speakeasy. At the bar I ordered a special cup of coffee, talked to my friends, and drank in the ambience. I couldn’t say when the play started or when it ended. I was given a part to play — that of a hired killer. I talked to mobsters, socialites, burlesque dancers, Frank’s possible lover, his pregnant wife, and his son. I had to ask the mobster Dutch Shultz where the after party was, but not let on that he would soon be murdered as well. It was a time-travel experience where I wandered in between the real and the unreal, the known and unknown. Von Buhler’s grandfather was shot and killed by John Guerrieri, but despite a confession, was let go. Von Buhler wrote about meeting the granddaughter of Guerrieri , who had no idea of this history. The more I heard, read, and relived, the further I fell into the rabbit hole of a weird narrative that invited me to participate even after the event ended. Attendees are asked to go to the Speakeasy blog to speculate on the reasons behind Spano’s killing, and these answers then add evidence to the next production.

Even more deliciously macabre, the play is modeled upon an actual set of dollhouses that von Buhler built to explore the circumstances regarding her grandfather’s murder. We can have all kinds of uncanny fun with that, of course, but understand that even this creepy little detail is part of American history. The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, created in the 1930’s by Frances Glessner Lee, were dollhouses that detectives used to “better assess visual evidence” in the most mysterious and violent of deaths. These studies inspired von Buhler’s own grotesque recreation of events (von Buhler). Such layering of storytelling, reporting, and mythmaking is but one reason to experience this play if you live or are visiting New York City. The other is this: Imagine Edgar Allen Poe has created a speakeasy in the Enterprise’s holodeck, and you get to play in that universe for three hours, attending the most fabulous party while helping to solve a real-life crime. There you go.