Washington Improv Theater to Stage ‘Slasher Movie’ Show Next Week

An “improvised slasher movie” is on its way to a 14th Street theater.

The Washington Improv Theater will resurrect its horror flick parody “Die! Die! Die!” at Source (1835 14th St. NW) as part of its upcoming “Summer Camp” series of shows.

The show follows a group of teens spending their summer in the isolated Camp Crystal Lake. Naturally, the campers make typical horror movie mistakes like having sex and experimenting with drugs and are picked off one-by-one by a costumed killer. By the show’s end, only one camper lives to see the true identity of the murderer — or not, said Dan Miller, WIT’s external relations director. This is improv, after all.

“Sometimes we decide to flip the script and the sole survivor ends up dying,” Miller said. “There’s really no guaranteed happy ending.”

But this is not a graphic slasher flick, Miller added. “There’s never any blood or gore,” he explained. “We will tell you there is somebody whose guts are spilling out, but all you see is them making strange faces.”

The show is often just as much of a surprise for the actors as it is for the audience, Miller added.

“You step on stage and don’t know if you’re the killer or the first person to die,” said Miller, “We figure it out with the audience. Once we do, we own it.”

“Die! Die! Die!” began in 2011 and is inspired by classic slasher films like “Friday the 13th” and “Nightmare on Elm Street.” The reboot will feature some familiar faces from the original cast and six new cast members, according to Miller.

“One of the most fun things about it is that it’s hard to do improvise mysteries, but this show successfully pulls it off,” Miller said.

The show, which lasts about 30 minutes, is part of a 90 minute performance block. The performance is set to debut on July 9 and run every Saturday at 9:30 p.m. until Aug. 6.

Photo by Ben Johnson