House of the Exquisite Corpse, Chicago’s one and only puppet haunted house, returns for its fifth Halloween season with a new, immersive horror experience sure to make your blood run cold.
House of the Exquisite Corpse V: Blood & Puppets runs October 9-November 1 at Steppenwolf Theatre’s Merle Reskin Space. Six teams of Chicago artists will bring life to six unique puppet terror experiences, tapping a new vein of horror – Blood – for its unifying theme in 2025.
Rough House Puppet Arts returns to Steppenwolf's Merle Reskin Space October 9-November 1 with its fifth annual House of the Exquisite Corpse, Chicago’s one and only puppet haunted house. This year’s theme is Blood & Puppets. Past Houses offer omens of what Halloween thrill seekers might expect in 2025, including (above) a beating heart created by Claire Saxe and Kevin Michael Wesson in 2022...
...a knife-wielding chef by Grace Needlman and Pablo Monterubio in 2023
and this alarming yarn puppet by Ken Buckingham and Corey Smith in 2024.
Photos by Yvette Marie Dostatni
Welcome to House of the Exquisite Corpse: Blood & Puppets. Pulses quicken as guests gather in a make-shift foyer, with a bar selling beer, wine and a horrifying specialty cocktail. Then, small groups trickle into the House via timed entries. Once inside, pulses race as visitors brave a dark, murky expanse, stopping by six “rooms” of puppet theater horror, peering through keyholes, cracks, and hidden doors to witness the carnage, and sometimes, humor, happening inside.
Fans of Halloween, puppetry, literature and live theater are the perfect audience for Chicago’s most unique haunted house, where original puppet horror, physical performance, soundscape, and illusion combine for a frightfully fun night of smart, creative adult revelry. This year, whether it be Blood & Power, Blood & Family, or Blood & Sacrifice, each room in this year’s House will take blood and puppets to places never seen before.
Step into "The Parlor," House of the Exquisite Corpse, 2021. Puppeteers Felix Mayes and Kevin Michael Wesson. Puppet by Grace Needlman. Credit: Evan Barr
“Get ready to be transfused! I mean, transformed!,” said Claire Saxe, Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Rough House Puppet Arts. “Our annual Halloween production gives local artists the freedom to follow their own visions, create in their own style, and be inspired by whatever type of horror freaks them out most.”
See what happens when they come together to assemble a collaborative installation that blurs the lines between horror, puppetry and theater. House of the Exquisite Corpse V: Blood & Puppets runs October 9-November 1. The House is open Thursdays through Saturdays. Timed entries are every 15 minutes, starting at 7 p.m. Last entry at 9:30 p.m.
Press opening night is Friday, October 10, starting at 7 p.m. with an earlier stop time and a bloody awesome post-show party after.
Steppenwolf Theatre’s Merle Reskin Space is located at 1624 N. Halsted in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood, just steps away from the CTA Red Line stop at North and Clybourn.
Tickets are $21-$46, and go on sale Thursday, August 28. Purchase tickets and select entry times at RoughHousePuppets.org. Tickets operate on a sliding scale, with cheaper late-nights, and pay-what-you-can at the door. Note: This production is recommended for ages 13 and over.
Directors this year are Chicago puppet artists Felix Mayes and Corey Smith, veterans of House of the Exquisite Corpse and the haunt’s first-ever guest directors. Artistic teams are Saskia Bakker and Emilie Wingate; madigan burke and Nina D’Angier; Casey Doe and Quinn Kempe; Chih-Jou Cheng and Charlie Malave; Justin D’Acci and Vim Hile; and, Pablo Monterrubio and Fletcher Pierson. Production manager is Anastar Alvarez. Stage manager is Lenny Fritsch.
Puppeteer Claire Saxe, Artistic Director, Rough House Puppet Arts, performing with a puppet by Grace Needlman in 2021. Credit Evan Barr
"Mosquito Brain" in 2022 featured puppets by Grace Needlman and Will Bishop and performer Chio Cabrera. Credit Yvette Marie Dostatni
Rough House's House of the Exquisite Corpse III in 2023 featured this puppet by Grace Needlman and Pablo Monterubio, puppeteered by Lindsey Ball.
Credit: Yvette Marie Dostatni
What’s new at Rough House Puppet Arts?
A new name, for one. Formerly known as Rough House Theatre Company since its founding in 2013, this year, the company adopted the new name Rough House Puppet Arts (RHPA) to encompass the scope of work beyond a focus on producing “theater.”
“There’s been a natural evolution of Rough House’s work over the past decade, shaped by who is in the community, the needs we identify, and what we think we can contribute,” said Saxe. “So, our collection of programming has grown to include regular community-gatherings, artist workshops, short-form and long-form shows, and programs that travel around the city. Through it all, we emphasize “pathing” creatives to wherever they want to get to in the world of puppetry. The result is that we no longer feel like a “theater company,” but an arts organization doing what we can in the ecosystem to nourish artists and audiences in the art form of puppetry.”
In addition, RHPA recently expanded its institutional footprint with the appointment of Marcey Abramovitz as Managing Director. Abramovitz is an experienced event producer, arts administrator, curator, and artist consultant with nearly two decades of expertise. In recent years, Abramovitz has served as Executive Director of the Logan Square Arts Festival and as curator of its visual and performing arts program. Her career includes various roles with organizations such as the Hyde Park Jazz Festival, Chicago International Movies and Music Festival, and Stage Left Theatre Company, among others. She is also an event producer at Elastic Arts Foundation.
Likewise, Samuel J. Lewis II, an actor, poet, vocalist, puppeteer, and pollinator across Chicago’s artistic communities, has taken on more responsibility at RHPA in his role as Program Director. He is also co-founder and Director of Outreach at Elastic Arts Foundation, where he created and curates the Dark Matter Residency and Series, and Director of Engagement and Artist Programs with the Hyde Park Jazz Festival.
Other key Rough House Puppet Arts staff include Sharon Udoh, Marketing Manager; Kevin Wesson, Community Programs Coordinator; and Myra Su and Caitlin McLeod, Nasty, Brutish & Short: A Puppet Cabaret Curators.
With institutional growth and broader outreach to artists and audiences comes a new emphasis at RHPA on striking creative sponsorship and partnership opportunities. To inquire, contact Abramovitz at marcey@roughhousetheater.com.
Puppets by Claire Saxe & Kevin Michael Wesson, 2022. Credit Yvette Marie Dostatni
House of the Exquisite Corpse III featured puppets and shadow work by Jacky Kelsey, puppeteered by Chio Cabrera and Lucy Wirtz. Credit Yvette Marie Dostatni
More about Rough House Puppet Arts
Rough House Puppet Arts is on a mission to connect individuals and communities through puppetry-arts that celebrate the weird things that make us unique, and the weirder things that bring us together.
The company’s work collides puppetry with physical theater, music, visual arts, and an insatiable taste for experimentation. Through programs designed to enrich the artist, the art form, and the community, Rough House works towards a vision of Chicago as an increasingly robust, diverse, and inclusive epicenter of contemporary puppet theater.
Each October, Rough House creates an all-new immersive puppet horror production. Beginning with the Harrow House series (2018, 2019), the project is now in its fifth year under the title House of the Exquisite Corpse -- a themed anthology of puppetry-performance installations, viewed by audiences through peep-holes in Chicago’s most artful, most haunted pop-up house. As the Chicago Reader put it, “if you want to move beyond schlock and shock into an elevated horror experience this October, look no further than House of the Exquisite Corpse.”
In 2024, the Reader also named Rough House’s Nasty, Brutish & Short: A Puppet Cabaret series “Best late-night adult-content puppet cabaret.” Funded in part by the Puppet Slam Network, the cabaret doubles as an evening of contemporary short-form puppet and object-based theater for adult audiences, and a low-risk environment for artists to perform new and experimental work and foster artistic exchange between puppet artists of different generations and mediums. Performed for years at Links Hall, Nasty, Brutish & Short continues its quarterly late-night showcases in the same venue, aka Constellation, 3111 W. Western Ave. in Chicago.
Rough House’s work has also appeared in the National Puppetry Festival, The Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival, punk houses, funeral parlors, a lotion factory, and the woods of Appalachia.
Rough House Puppet Arts’ Board of Directors includes Kacie Smith (President), Jason Estremera (Treasurer), Brandon Elkins (Secretary), Leanna Quartuccio, Karlyn Meyer, Savannah Rousse, Antonio Luna, Mike Wydrzynski and Mike Oleon, Rough House’s co-founder and former co-artistic director.
For more information, visit RoughHousePuppets.org and follow the company on Instagram and Facebook.