The Ghosts Rise Again for Flood of Spirits

The past is not a thing we can readily put behind us: that's both the unnerving premise of Austin-set historical séance drama Flood of Spirits, and the reality of the play, as it returns for Halloween after two successful stagings in under two years.

The interactive play draws on a real historical tragedy: On April 7, 1900, a hydroelectric dam on the Colorado River collapsed, sending the waters of the Lake McDonald reservoir flooding into Downtown Austin, killing dozens and destroying homes and businesses. In Flood of Spirits, survivors and the bereaved gather at the house of a local dignitary for séance, in hopes of one last connection with those that they have lost.

Writer, director, and star Rebecca Maag debuted the play at FronteraFest 2023 at the Hillside Farmacy. That production that was nearly derailed by the ice storm of 2023 but went on to become the toast of the fest. She then resurrected it ("dad joke" she laughs) at the Driskill hotel last Halloween. Since then, she also launched Overheard on a Train, another interactive show, this time performed onboard the Cap Metro Red Line commuter line, but now she’s reconnecting with the spirit world with the return of Flood of Spirits, just in time for Halloween "It's been fun to get it dusted off and ready again," Maag said. Compared to the first, icebound experience, she added, “It is easier on our part.”

This revised production returns to the original venue, Hillside Farmacy. Maag described is as “an intimate space, so I hope guests will feel like they’ve been invited into something special.” However, with this staging comes some new faces in the cast. Maag is back, as is Tatyana Smith who appeared in last Halloween’s revival as the medium Madame Gardot, while Ryan Ashkenase and Matthew Sabo are new to the cast as duplicitous servant George and skeptical Henry Drake respectively. And, in the unlikely event that those from the other side do not manifest, there are plenty of spirits to be had as the bar staff of Hillside Farmacy have designed appropriate twists on favorite cocktails, including an Old Fashioned, Sidecar, Penicillin and, of course, the Corpse Reviver.

Equally fresh to the show every night is the audience. In this immersive, interactive production, they become part of the experience. Each guest of the theatre is a guest of the Drakes, and each will have their interaction with Madame Gardot as she connects them with the spirit world. “I like the audience experience,” Maag said. “I like being in the room and in the show and watching people feel a bit of delight and a bit of surprise and watching them uncover this connection to the city that they live in and its past, something that they may not have known.”

There’s also the pleasure of watching what each different audience brings to the performance. “Audiences have read the family history they’ve been given and used that for launching even more back story, and brought that new back story into the room, into the show, and in some cases brought some humor, some peccadillos of the deceased person, that they came up with themselves. When that happens, it’s a fun thing for the audience, it’s a surprise for the cast, and I think that brings some of this magic into this experience that, like many live experiences, will only happen once.”

However, that audience interaction is where the biggest change from the earlier productions comes in. Guests have always been assigned bios and items that connect them to their character: with this iteration, Maag said, “I’ve added a welcome period in between the time of guests arrival and the start of the time of the performance, I’ll be presenting everyone with the family histories, their own and the other guests’, so I hope to provide a full picture of what Austin society was like in the year 1900, and help guests feel connected to that story.”

That deeper history comes in part because, across multiple staging, Maag has found out more about the history of the real event. Her original research came from diving into the archives of the Austin History Center, and it was not until after the first run of Flood of Spirits that she found out there was a book about the tragedy, The Austin Dam Disaster of 1900 by Elizabeth H. Clare, part of the Images of America series. In there, she found the story of Miss Hazel Keyes, a famous aerialist and tightrope walker who performed in Austin with her pert monkey, Miss Jennie Yan Yan. Maag said, “She and the monkey had descended across the lake on a wire that suspended in the midst of this fairground. Now I can mention lady aerialist Miss Hazel Keyes in my explanation to set the stage.”

Adding these little story details brings the audience closer to what Austin was in 1900: not some hardscrabble frontier town, but a center of education, governance, engineering, and culture. “We have this mistaken impression that people in the part were a little less fun, or harder strapped, or lived in more challenging times,” Maag said, “but there was a sense of ambition, and the dam was part of that.”

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Flood of Spirits

Oct. 21-22, 28-29: Performances at 6 and 8:15pm
Hillside Farmacy, 1209 E. 11th
floodofspirits.com