The Ahmanson Theatre is about to become a little less comfortable and, suffice it to say, hair-raising. Beginning Thursday, Nov. 13th and running through Sunday, Dec. 7th, Center Theatre Group will present Paranormal Activity, a brand-new stage story set in the world of Paramount’s hit horror franchise — not a movie-to-stage retread, but a theatrical haunting devised specifically for live audiences.
It’s the Los Angeles premiere, following the North American debut last month in Chicago, and it arrives with serious horror-and-immersive pedigree: playwright Levi Holloway, whose Grey House unnerved Broadway in 2023, and director Felix Barrett, the founding force behind Punchdrunk and Sleep No More, are translating a slow-burn narrative into a proscenium setting.
Like the films, the stage version orbits an ordinary couple in extraordinary terror. Jimmy and Lou have fled Chicago for London to leave the past behind, only to discover that “places aren’t haunted, people are.” That gives the play license to stay intimate (two people, one home, one unshakable presence) while still escalating into the “what just happened?” territory that UK audiences talked about in early runs. Cast for the Ahmanson includes Cher Álvarez and Patrick Heusinger as the couple, with Shannon Cochran (who’s no stranger to screen horror with The Ring) as Jimmy’s mother and Kate Fry as a medium drawn into the disturbance.
What makes Paranormal Activity especially attractive is the collision of horror and stagecraft. Barrett’s work with Punchdrunk has always prized atmosphere, darkness, and tension, and Holloway has said the goal was to “create an actual nightmare” for the stage — something that feels impossible but is happening right in front of you. Add to that the illusions of Tony Award-winner Chris Fisher, the mind behind incredible effects in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and Back to the Future, and you have a production built to deliver the kind of vanishings, apparitions, and object movement that will startle even seasoned theatre audiences.
Though it’s not just about jump scares, either. The creative team has been clear — in London, Chicago, and now Los Angeles — that this isn’t a haunted house onstage; it’s a relationship story that gets invaded. That’s in keeping with the original 2007 film’s DNA, where the fright works because the camera never blinks and the couple feels real. Here, theatre does what film can’t by locking a roomful of people into a single-framed tightening silence that picks up a delightfully dread-tinged momentum. More absorbing yet is that the production weaponizes darkness — sometimes letting the eye strain to make out shapes, sometimes flooding the set with projection to make the unseen suddenly very salient.
As Los Angeles crowds search for a final post-Halloween thrill — a reason to linger in spooky season just a bit longer — Paranormal Activity promises a chilling bridge between cinematic fear and theatrical invention. Performances run Tues–Thurs at 7:30 p.m., Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sundays at 1 and 7 p.m. (no Sunday evening on Dec. 7th).
For fans of the film franchise, or of theatrical mischief in the vein of 2:22 – A Ghost Story and other recent stage chillers in the region, this is the rare horror event that isn’t asking you to watch people get scared on screen; it’s asking you to sit in the room while the impossible happens a few yards away. And judging by the reactions of previous audiences, Ahmanson regulars may want to bring a friend to clutch when the goings get ghastly.
Cover image caption: Cher Álvarez stars in Paranormal Activity, which will play at Center Theatre Group’s Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles from Nov. 13th through Dec. 7th. Photo by Kyle Flubacker.
Paranormal Activity — A New Story Live on Stage — runs through Sunday Dec. 7th at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit centertheatregroup.com.
