VAMPYR THEATRE

CLICK HERE FOR FULL STORY+VIDEOS & MUSIC

http://ionamiller.weebly.com/vampyre-theatre.html

How Does that Grab You?
Savoir Scare, Sartorial Splendor & Sanguine Satire

by Iona Miller, CHT, Oct. 2010

SAVOIR SCARE

Desperately seeking that ever-elusive interview with a "true" vampyr, today the NYC personals are filled with ads from would-be reporters on the cultural phenomenon. NYC musician Tony Sokol beat the bloody stampede and might consider it "oh so Last Century." He's "been there and done that."

But how do you get "proof of life" from the Undead? What kind of a life is it to make acute awareness of death a priority? Shamans and healers share such obsessions with outlaw mystics. But it is a life in the borderlands of experience.

Castenda suggested living life with death on your shoulder. If we are ever in doubt about what to do, we look to our right shoulder to our higher self. If we remain in doubt about whether or not to take some action, we look to our left shoulder and see death sitting there waiting to take us. That is a stark reminder that we are human beings and we must act immediately lest death take us. But the undead have a radically different point of view on the whole matter. Death is the Hunter.

Tony Sokol can arguably be characterized by Don Juan's description of a warrior: "A detached man, who knows he has no possibility of fending off his death, has only one thing to back himself with: the power of his decisions. He has to be, so to speak, the master of his choices. He must fully understand that his choice is his responsibility and once he makes it there is no longer time for regrets or recriminations. He decisions are final, simply because death does not permit him time to cling to anything. . . . The knowledge of his death guides him and makes him detached and silently lusty; the power of his final decisions makes him able to choose without regrets and what he chooses is always strategically the best; and so he performs everything he has to with gusto and lusty efficiency." Whatever befell him was his own choice.

MACABRE MYSTERY

Iona: I grew up on matinee horror flicks and the fantastic monster mags that glorified their producers and the illusions they spin. I did the Monster Mash with Bobby Boris Picket at my LA high school basketball game. So, it isn't surprising I've been fascinated with the Vampyre Theatre for as long as I've known its creator Tony Sokol. It just sounded so damned fun, at the bleeding edge.

He wanted to discuss the nuances of hypnosis and its bipolar effects for good and ill. He realized the hypnotist and the vampyr have much in common; both are tricksters who can see into the dark recesses of the human condition and tweak what is found. Drama is co-existent with our primal being. Cave, womb, and tomb are symbolically synonymous. If the author is a shaman, the script is a teacher. Usually the theatre is concrete and immediate though real consequences are non-existent. Or, are they?

ART IS RITUAL & RITUAL IS ART

Tony and I have explored a bit of moral relativism, shadowy sentiments, Jungian thought, inductions, symbolic semantics, psychic abilities and therapeutic techniques from clinical hypnotherapy over the years. We've argued the pros and cons of suggestion, hypnotics, deprogramming and mind control. We've discussed clinical aspects of DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder) and PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), metaphor therapy, erotic hypnosis and extraordinary human potential. Undeniably, there is real evil in the world. America is a vampiric corporate culture, sucking the life blood out of the Third World. But the lifestyle phenomenon is best described, undoubtedly, by those immersed in its doleful drama. No Hell or Satanism required.

Sokol has interviewed over 300 self-styled vampyres, including a handful who's seeming paranormal qualities or youthful appearance he could not account for. They stimulate a fount of ideas for scripts. Most vampyres, claims Sokol, are fans indulging in subculture and what we euphemistically call "lifestyle," but it is closer to a "deathstyle" -- or life in the stylistic trappings of death. But his work also surfaced victims of abuse who sought his help and support.

Growing up in a Sicilian family, Tony knows an evil eye when he sees one. He understands some self-styled Vamps are more pathological than others. He also knows there are many toxic people out there that wouldn't call themselves vampires but behave according to that script. Even though he means them no harm, it is a sine qua non that vampire hunters remain fearless. Hence, his own is a dark-adapted third eye. To survive you have to trust your visceral felt-sense. What else is new in NYC?

FACING THE SHADOW

High Weirdness is on the rise like a Harvest Moon. One needs mad skills to get by in the Big City. It's "eat or be eaten.
In some of our correspondence Tonyspoke about rescuing survivors and sex-slaves.

Tony: I have no trauma in my background, until I met the people with DID when I was doing Vampyr Theatre. I was brought into their inner landscapes. That was trauma. I wouldn't be as empathic as I am with the abused if it weren't for that.

I had a similar experience doing sexual abuse hypnotherapy for years. I heard stories I could never have imagined.

I've been following the arc of "survivors" in the news. I find it interesting how their stories are filtering through to mainstream media. With specials on Biography and the History channels. When I was first approached by survivors, I had no idea such things existed. Oh, I had the book CIA: Operation Mind Control (by Walter Bowart also of the East Village Other) - but it didn't get into the people who were talking to me. I sometimes wonder if my putting them so heavily in Vampyr Theatre somehow further enabled this to become more known. And all of it started for me with a pamphlet slid under my door at 3 in the morning. I'd made Illuminati references way back when. Then the only people I knew who wrote about it were Robert Anton Wilson and Bill Cooper - who I spoke to only once.

"You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby," a play I wrote after Vampyr Theatre, was much more specific. Named corporations. It was published in its entirety in a defense law journal. I'd been given papers by people who were institutionalized and passed them on to other people.

MIND CONTROL COUNTERMEASURES

It's been so long since I was contacted by such trauma-based survivors - and yet I am still triggered by their language and become very protective of them.  Why does this fascinate me so much and why am I so willing and eager to explore these dark things, even in myself? I think we spoke on this (CIA mind control experiments) - and I also spoke with Mark Philips (Cathy O'Brien) about it. I'd heard from many different sources that people involved in MK Ultra and related projects were allowed, even encouraged, to take many different drugs, like LSD, cocaine and heroine - but were not allowed to take marijuana - does marijuana affect mind control?

When I first read Trance Formation of America - before I got in touch with Cathy and Mark - I didn't believe that everyone who was named could be involved. For those who don't know, Cathy O'Brien is the only vocal and recovered survivor of the CIA's MK-Ultra Project Monarch operation. Cathy was rescued and deprogrammed from being a mind control slave by Mark. The book traces her path from child pornography and recruitment into the program to serving as a top-level intelligence agent and White House sex slave, TRANCE FORMATION of America is a definitive eye-witness account of government corruption that implicates some of the most prominent figures in U.S. politics.

I have since talked to quite a few people who underwent training that involved trips to Disneyworld - now, this doesn't mean that everyone who watches a Disney film is a victim - but I will say that I thought more than twice about showing my kids Disney films - I wasn't afraid to show them the Wizard of Oz - it's an SRA (Satanic Ritual Abuse) trigger, not general trigger - and of course they love it - but it will always be in the back of my head.

Even "The Simpsons" noted that there were only two people born with the "evil gene:" Adolph Hitler and Walt Disney.
My family said that long before I was aware of the existence of SRAs - but we really thought we were joking.

IRRATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

Io: I have another friend who is a broadcaster now but was an adopted DID mind control vic. After years of maladaption, he made trips to South America to heal with ayahuasca, which was the only treatment he found that worked. The same is true for another dissociative I know who was forced to be a Headhunter of Viet Cong generals when he was in Spec Ops. Naturally the hometeam tried to snuff him once the tour of duty was over. He found kinship on the Native American Red Road, since they had experience dealing with the spiritual healing of warriors. Vision quests and Sundance have helped. Only peer therapy works. Conventional therapy can be worse than useless, especially if the traumas were initiated by so-called mental health professionals or authority figures. The trauma keeps happenING in the inner world of these vics and that is the source of the dissociation beyond programming for it. Dissociation, even into multiple personalities is the only escape.

In your own work you must have seen plenty of heavy gravitational weirdos, cult headtrips and brainwashing effects such as Stockholm Syndrome -- or shall we say, "Stalk-home"? I've had a fascination with TI's - Targeted Individuals who claim they are gang-stalked and suffer electronic and other harassment. It is very difficult to separate their self-reports from those of the mentally ill. Yet most, like abductees, appear normal except for their TI ideation. We've speculated about doing mutual hypnosis over Skype and other apps -- sort of Skypnosis. What other kinds of inductions do you like, Tony, besides the naturalistic utilization you pulled on the psychic?

I know you work with NLP hypnotist Elena Bellof and play music together sometimes. Do you use trancing drums and tones in your music with that intentionality? Is it more Ericksonian, subtle stuff, pacing and leading? Direct gaze? Have you ever done street hypnosis for guerrilla theater or otherwise? Do you have any issues about monkeying with someone's falsely so-called True Will? Did you consider planting cultural memes with your theater? Are you working on any scripts now besides the "Joe Gallo" story?

Tony: The hypnosis in Vampyr Theatre was more like what's called Gypsy hypnosis. It's in the Russian papers now on the internet, but then, I knew the Gypsies that tried that. I want to write one about a Gypsy who's predictions come true. To even her own surprise. She becomes a guru at the end of the world. The more she says the more happens, you just want her to shut up.

I was walking around the city and went to a storefront psychic - was there for - literally - over two hours. She was telling me about a curse I had to remove - at a cost of just $696. Numerologically, a good number. She said that in a past life I was a very powerful healer and magician - yada yada. But, not wanting to spend this numerologically charged $696, I pressed her on why I had this curse - and she said I had gifts of my own - and that I used them in a past life to get a woman to sleep with me - and her husband put the curse on me. I pushed it further and asked which gifts - and she said mind control - so - I used that.  I hypnotized her using just her superstition. After two hours I walked out of there without paying a penny - not even for the original $10 reading. She believed I could, so I could.

The Confusion Technique is very useful. You can scramble a person's eggs before they realize it's happening. It works better on the highly intelligent than many techniques. Charismatic personalities and recruiters seem to intuitively employ such methods to create a fascination or [false] 'glamour.' Gypsy hypnosis is implicated in street crime. A handshake becomes a shakedown. A pattern interruption in a familiar act makes the mind go blank and suggestible. Naturally, predatory hypnosis is opportunistic and naturalistic. Opportunism and exploitative rapport techniques are hermetic as symbolized by the tarot trump "The Magician." Hermes was an archetypal thief. Actually, there is a whole technology that can hack human software programming, including mirroring, pacing and leading and pattern interrupt.

I never thought about inductions as a kind. I make up everything as I go along. Isn't hypnosis a con we play on ourselves? I had a lot of misconceptions until I did research for a series of interviews I did with my friend Elena, who's a hypnotherapist and a filmmaker, now making a documentary on hypnosis. I like psychic manipulation. Good enough for Bela, Christopher Lee, Conrad Veidt and Lara Parker. I wrote stage hypnosis for Vampyr Theatre, but ultimately it's the hypnotic power of the sociopathological psyche. I like the hypnosis of the deer in the headlights. The hypnosis of the rubbernecker looking at a car wreck. Especially if it causes another crash. You need the payoff. We keep driving and we get sapped out of the payoff. Well, sometimes, but then it's usually you. I find hypnosis to be vaguely arousing, but I don't go for the whole hypnofetish thing - not at all into pain, humiliation or the S&M overtones. Even though Vampyr Theatre started in S&M clubs - well, except the fashion - love leather. Vampyr Theare played more into the fantasies of a trance addict - but I include recreational drugs, shamanism and so many other things in that. Hypnosis is just a small part of it.

I'm working with Elena again on her new documentary on hypnosis and helping out with the showings of Zaritsas, her documentary on how Russian immigrant women are seen as golddiggers, which I did some music for. I'm working with DJ Beatz on some music and I'm playing around with the second of what will be my gangster trilogy. And trying to sell Jukebox King, the documentary on "Crazy" Joe, "Kid Blast" and Larry Gallo. If you know anyone in the market...

LET'S DO THE MINDWARP AGAIN

The "Clark Kent" of Corpus Delecti, up-front Tony seems like a mild-mannered musician who has a healthy interest in family life and bettering his corner of the world, but he also has a wry edge and keen sense of cultural commentary that is the mark of a true artist. He's written and produced many plays and events other than Vampyre Theatre, but none have gotten as much ink as this perennial topic, which like its protagonist, just won't die. He understands the murky interface between Mystery and the Macabre.  There will be gore.

Sokol knows how to set the stage and let the participants' imaginations take it from there. He understands the power of suggestion. He has taken the throbbing pulse of the public and driven it higher. He did it by turning the tables on dinner theatre, making the customer into the entree for walking dread by beating down the fourth wall with bat wings. He must have a wicked sense of humor to pen such black comedy. The irony is he is truly a "gentle-man."

Tony, you're a composer, a bass player, vocalist. I associate you mostly with your music, some of which amplifies vampiric themes - Bloodletting, Vampire Dreams, etc. How did you weave your music into the shows without getting into the kitsch of "the musical"?

I was mainly a musician when I started writing Vampyr Theatre, but it wasn't at all a musical. Not like"AssassiNation: We Killed JFK," which was a rock opera. But I wrote the music to Vampyr Theatre first, the incidental music, and then wrote the lyrics, the actual plays, after based on the rising and falling of the music I wrote, which, more often than not, the directors didn't use. Dinner theater would have been interesting. I'd have loved to see people trying to eat while we did our thing all over them, especially in the splatter section. We were too impolite. We ate instread. But we would have shared.

SULTRY PSYCHODRAMA

Q. New York City has a long tradition of performance art that blurs the line between actors and audience. I wonder what the relatively new and controversial discipline of Performance Theory would say about your productions? Does the audience want ideology or an IV? After multiple performances, what is your perception of the audience desires? Why is the vampire the Spirit of our times? Life & Death is the Primal Drama, but what mysteries lie in between? Are vampires the emotional equivalent of psychological Dark Matter & Energy?  Are we just part of their dream?

Vampires don't dream, so that would be pretty limiting for us. We were pretty undisciplined. I was anyway. Most of the actors were actors and were schooled in whatever acting technique they were schooled in. I tried to slip some vampires into the cast. Occasionally it worked.

I watched the audience change. Some people were regulars and over the year I'd see them change their style of dress and makeup. I watched the audience go Goth. Then I watched them go vampire. I loved the people who walked out because they were offended. The ones who yelled at me about Jesus. The exit counselors and cops I could have done without, but that never got out of hand and I protected the performers from it. Mostly. One exit counselor hijacked one of my actors.

How does the counterpoint of comedy balance the dark forces with a broken-down ritual plot? After all, tragedy for the human may be comedic to the predator. What part did improvisation play in your productions? Music? Athletics? Weren't you in some sense 'playing with' or orchestrating your audience with your dynamic images? What do you think is the perennial attraction of these dark characters? What is the meaning of the fatal attraction, demonic psychic possession, that utterly saps vitality? Numerous Jungian analogies have been drawn between vampires and addiction. Even some alien reports have vampiric features. Our society is addictive, greedy. Is that noticeably reflected in our literature and films?

I don't know how much of a balance it provided. The humor was as dark and nasty as what we passed for horror. In a bad review we got at the time, someone said we were just a bunch of one-liners. Sadly, the directors only tolerated improv from themselves and me. And me only because they had no choice. Sometimes the actors had no choice because they had to respond to the audience, who were invited there to participate. I don't think films show us as greedy as we really are. Selfish, but not greedy. There's no mirror big enough to reflect that reality. Especially when most films are paid for by rich corporate conglomerates. We're attracted to them because they're free to do what they wanted without fear of morality or consequence or even death.

ENERGY SUCKS

It is easy to see why each man kills the things he loves. To know a living thing is to kill it...
To try to know a living being is to try to suck the life out of that being.
The temptation of the vampire fiend, is this knowledge.
The desirous consciousness, the spirit, is a vampire. --D.H. Laurence

The vampire myth describes, above all, an aberrant transfer of energy of vitality. How is it that lovers, artists, parents, the insane, trade energy? How do our supposed friends suck energy from us in a short visit? The vampire archetype is a powerful way to describe these unexplained psychic phenomena. We may resist using the word, but "possessed" is a word that seems most accurate to describe them, particularly malignant narcissists or sociopaths. Not only are they self-absorbed, they want to absorb you, too.

Wow, that question really tires me out. My daughter Gabriella, who's 11, wants to do the Ouija board, not because of any predictive energy she'll tap, but because she wants to be possessed. I want to try the dip sin, the Chinese Ouija board; you have to use blood.

Everyone taps or fuels energy. Like the Dave Chappelle routine about how he won't get high with black people anymore because they get depressing while white people, when they're high, talk about the last time they got high.


VICTIM / VICTIMIZER

The symbiosis lies in the common identity - both victim and perpetrator are cursed. Becoming a vampire is the opposite of redemption. The vampire is the anti-matter of spiritual transformation. Holism is expressed in Eastern cultures by gods and goddesses that actually drink blood. Blood is a central theme in sacrifice and religion.

But, these divinities have become our addictions to money, power, sex, food, fame and possessions. Compulsions can sap us. So can falling in love with a toxic partner. Love can be the most powerful addiction. The relationship becomes vampiric. Vampiric parents also attack those they love. An addiction is any process over which we are powerless, out of control, lacking free will or choice. Love in vein.

Theatre, dance, music and games all share certain rhythms and rules that allow us to experience the non-ordinary. They produce altered states, suspend time. Symbolic time is eternal yet somehow infinitely hungry to the point of consuming the universe, even manically expanding into an unimaginable beyond.

DARK CHARISMA

What taboos prevent us in ordinary life from idealizing the dark side? Does the vampire embody both our fears and ambivalence about death -- the pain and the pleasure? Is the vampire our pathological Superego, eager to consume the ego at its puny expense? We plunge into the abyssal seams between reality and the invisible worlds. Those seams are torn asunder in a rending of the mystic veil, revealing that which was there all along but formerly hidden by horror, denial and naivete. Today's aliens share much in common with the traits of the traditional vampire.

We are weakened, broken, disfigured. Another illusion adds to our confusion. Nothing is real. What is it about this dramatic catharsis we seek again and again like a wicked roller coaster ride? It is a narrative of a subcurrent of evil that pervades and invades ordinary being. It is an amorphous threat,  penetration of our souls which it then proceeds to devour. The seduction overwhelms and conceals the nihilistic telos. It is a soporific narcotic. We are transfixed.

You make death sound depressing.  I vacation in the abyssal seams between reality and the invisible worlds. I have a time share.There are a lot of people who idealize the dark side. Even in popular culture. And what is the dark side? The Simpsons said there were two people in the 20th Century who were born with the evil gene, Adolph Hitler and Walt Disney. The Care Bears used to scare the shit out of me as a teenager. So what is dark? Lucifer is the bringer of light, illumination and the god of the Old Testament sounds like a god of war to me. That's pretty dark. Jail prevents us. We don't like jail. Who does? I mean there are a couple. They know who they are.

Some of them came to Vampyr Theatre. One of them corrected me on some Aztec blood ritual goddess pronunciation in "Let Us Prey." He came back a lot. Even got hypnotized onstage. Licked a lady vampire's boot and he wasn't into that kind of thing. He talked to me after and was convinced that she was a real vampire. She was just an actress, but who was I to shatter the illusion? That's the power of suggestion. Nothing really stops us. If we thought we wouldn't get caught, we'd do anything. A lot of people do things to get caught. Some people want to get caught by aliens.

Take away repurcussions and you're free. It's less a spiritual void that they're suffering, than a criminal enterprise in a criminal underground where they kill and eat people and cops or priests who try to interfere. They don't care. It's all now. There may or may not be any tomorrows, but who the fuck cares? That was our refrain, by the way. After this, there's nothing. No damnation, salvation, paradise or garage in Buffalo. There's worms. Vampires get that.

CORSET RIPPERS & CARDIAC ARREST

Q. How do you feel about the new cultish crop of Vampotainment -- from Twilight and Vampire Diaries to True Blood? Clearly there isn't one audience -- but different demographics from pre-teen turmoil to full immersion fusion. Is it a case of get them early while their minds are malleable? Vamp Light for hormonal hostages? Geek Tragedy? A skewed Feast of Dionysus? Carnal catharsis? Primal rituals? Phallic Danse Macabre? Post-POMO porn?

I haven't really gotten to "Twilight." The idea of sexless, nonviolent vampires who come out in the day just doesn't grab me. Give me The Satanic Rites of Dracula. True Blood I watch, sometimes twice a week. But I watch more shows on HBO than any other channel. I get a little glazed eyed when they stray from vampires. Young people naturally gravitate to vampires because of the forbidden and we're all there for the sex, but it's power and they sometimes feel powerless. Or they should. What can they really do? Shoot up a school? You think people will listen over all that noise? Let them be vampires. Still nobody will listen, but they can bite them on the ass later. The eternal youth aspect. Lost Boys. My vampires played hookie, smoked cigars and broke windows. Like the lost boys in Pinocchio. Actually, I didn't let my actors smoke in character. It always distracts me when vampires smoke on TV or in movies, they don't breathe. How can they smoke? Bugs my daughters too. But also, most theaters wouldn't let us smoke on stage, so it was a necessary limitation. I tried getting the actors not to breathe and was banned from rehearsals.

Is the vampire a variant of Dionysus himself and the Maenads? This theme appeared in Season 2 of True Blood. Jung implied that the gods have become diseases. Does that imply cultural devolution? What ritual now promises the rebirth of the dead world? Greek theater arose from the dynamic braiding of ritual and entertainment with conflict, mutilation and death.

I'm a wino, so Dionysus was always a big favorite of mine. Deep reds and peasant wines, if you're getting me a gift bag. For Vampyr Theatre, I combined four rituals, from four regions and left out one element so it wouldn't actually work, because I'm a pussy who read Lovecraft. I'm sure Troy Acree, our director, figured that out and is still pissed I left things out. You can do so much with blood. It goes with everything. And it tastes like chicken. Ours tasted like very, very, syruppy sweet soap.

How did your performance space affect the execution of your show? Did you allow the audience any "breaks," or maintain the dramatic arc throughout the show? Was there a deliberate attempt to relieve their tensions in your scripting? License and control. Does control of the audience add to their tensions? What happens when the audience becomes the collective architect of the action? Who then is evoking, guiding and selecting patterns? Does that wedge drive a stake between theater and performance? Does it create a dissociation that mirrors the vampyric process?

Control of the audience? We took them hostage. We frisked them. We threw them up against the wall and checked for weapons. Sometimes we found them. I loved my audience. They amused me endlessly. The spaces we used sometimes hindered what I'd written. But it was written to be sparse. It was written to be done in the old abandoned subway station on 26th St. The D train used to pass it way back. The last script, the last play we did was the most diluted by space. It was written to be done in a club, it was done in a theater. One of the last weekends we were booked the theater build a stage-within-a-stage for another show they were doing. We did ours after hours, midnight shows. My actors broke the stage. Made me proud.

HOOKED ON VAMPS

How did you amplify any sense of self-transcendence inherent in the vampire theme? Vampire as initiator into a vastly expanded realm of experience is one variation on the theme. The Trickster element is always present; things are not what they seem.

What rules did you give yourself to frame your dramatic action? looser, tighter, inner, outer? Does the frame include the vampire's hyperdimensional perspective? The inner frame of predator/prey is pretty tight but plays out loosely in millions of variations, each time a death ensues -- even with rebirth into the realm of the undead. But to "in" it is to be compulsively driven with empty desire. The demonic colonizes the psyche and revitalizes itself by sucking the life force - propagation by cannibalization.

Have you thought about moving Vampyr Theatre into an immersive environment such as Second Life? Zombies are an old staple of video games. What levels of "Role Playing" have you observed in the conventional culture and Vampire sub-cultures? What is it in this genre that just grabs people and won't let them go? What is the secret language of the undead body? Narcissistic delusions of grandeur or ? Is an empty husk all we are left with when death loses its sting?

We discussed different timings to bring forced perspective in performance. But the drugs wore off. I used languages. Different vampires speaking different languages who understood each other to represent telepathy. I don't know anything about Second Life. There's a lot of roleplaying in the vampire subculture. People used to leave garlic and crosses on their seats, We had exit counselors see the show and try to find people who needed directions back to god.  The vampires of Vampyr Theatre devolved. I tried to pervert all expectations. Subversive art. Vampires were great for that. I built a language of blasphemy. Because the religious symbols were impotent. When we took the blood and drank it, it was still warm. It wasn't bread we ate. Our host was still breathing. Vampires aren't vegetarians. My vampires were humanitarian.