Some might consider Friday the 13th an unlucky day. For Troy Heard, artistic director of Majestic Repertory Theatre, it was nothing short of magical.
A TikTok video of his gloriously campy production of Scream’d: An Unauthorized Musical Parody had started circulating online. In the afternoon, the video had amassed a whopping 450,000 likes. By the end of that day’s show? It had climbed to 950,000.
“We went over to Davy’s and said ‘Once this thing reaches a million, then we’re gonna do a toast,’” says Heard. “We’re ready for that to tick over, when one of the actor’s husbands said [to] check out Twitter. Someone else had taken that video, put it on their own account and that was quickly reaching a million. With two different videos hitting a million views at one time, that was the sign.”
In the span of months, Majestic’s musical parody of Wes Craven’s Scream has become an internet favorite. People from around the world—Brazil, Colombia, England, Ireland and Australia—have commented on the videos, requesting shows in their countries.
“During Christmas break, I was recording videos for mothers who said ‘Hey, can you announce to my kid that I bought them Scream’d tickets for Christmas and we’re flying in?’ It was weird and surreal. But if it works, let it run. This is the dream,” Heard says.
Annette Houlihan Verdolino, best known as the burlesque emcee Blanche DeBris and one of the stars of Menopause the Musical and many of Majestic’s plays since season one, gets emotional just thinking about the journey of this little production, and the impact it’s having on the city as a whole.
“The whole world is seeing what Vegas has to offer,” she says. “This city is getting bigger and bigger, and so many people have moved to this city. A lot of people come with the ideas of what theater and art should be from wherever they came from, not realizing that it’s there in Vegas already, and people have been doing it for years and years and years.”
Much like the original Scream film from 1996, Scream’d has now spawned its own sequel, with a remount returning on January 19 as an open-ended resident show at Majestic. This is a first for the Arts District-based theater company, whose past productions of The Sandman, Clown Bar and The Craft all received glowing reviews but temporary runs.
Considering all the headwinds local theater has faced, this is a much-needed win, Heard says.
“When we reopened in 2021, we were doing great. There was this pent-up demand we were fulfilling,” he says. “But then all of a sudden, we saw sales just slow.
“But it wasn’t just us. It was literally throughout the country, this big bemoaning of, ‘Where are the audiences? What do we need to do? How do we get them in?’ Society has shifted. The pandemic changed us permanently.”
Majestic’s artistic director is earnest when he says the widespread success of Scream’d saved his theater. And in a way, it’s given the entire Las Vegas theater community a boost, as well.
Verdolino, who will return to the stage in A Public Fit’s Dancing at Lughnasa at Vegas Theatre Company in April, recalls a similar situation happening to a company she worked for in New York. That one hit changes everything.
“That one show enabled other shows and other risks to be taken. Having this resident show at Majestic hopefully will allow Troy to do other projects that he’s been really wanting to do but hasn’t been able to,” she says. “There’s the whole principle of ‘the rising tide lifts all boats.’ Maybe recognition of this runaway hit will help other small arts companies, and bleed out into other things like dance companies and musicians, and local artists that we are so fertile with in Vegas.
“The rising tide is going to help other people to say, ‘Maybe I’ll dust off that project that I’ve been working on, and actually get it written and actually get it produced.’”
Carly Presher, who performs as Courteney Cox’s movie character Gale in Scream’d, sees the show’s success as a reassurance of sorts.
“It feels good in the sense of providing community for actors, but also just for the people in the community. I think that in and of itself is the omen,” she says. “We’re paving a way for everyone to kind of fall in line and say, ‘We got this, we can do it. People still enjoy theater. They want to do this, they want to come out.’ That’s what feels so good about it for me.”
When it comes to musical parodies, Heard faithfully abides by one rule: You have to be able to follow along even if you haven’t seen the movie. That’s how his unauthorized parody of The Craft, based on the 1996 cult classic about four high school witches, did so well, going on to tour in parts of the U.S.
“No one can ever anticipate something going viral. Companies try to force that all the time, but it has to happen naturally and of its own accord,” Heard says. “A lot of what worked on Scream’d came from our experience with The Craft and what worked there, and allowing people to film certain moments really made that show take off. Of course we wanted to replicate it here.”
In conceptualizing Scream’d, Heard aimed to tap into a nontraditional theater experience. It would be a party; a ’90s trip of nostalgic pop, soundtracked by a live band under the musical direction of Brandon Scott Grayson, and choreographed by Noah Rivera, a Broadway performer who has starred in everything from Wicked to In the Heights and performs as David Arquette’s Dewey in Scream’d. There would be blood, and there would be boy bands—just as the theater gods intended.
“The Craft and Scream’d are total love letters to the film and the fandom around the films. I think that’s what makes it so fabulous,” Verdolino says. “You find your people when you’re in those shows. It’s why people used to go to see [The] Rocky Horror [Picture Show] every week and dress up. It’s the same idea.”
Theatergoers dressing up in full Ghostface getup isn’t completely unheard of. In a way, it’s expected at this eccentric show. The source material, combined with the soundtrack and humor, makes musical parodies like Scream’d an accessible gateway to other theater productions down the line.
“You get these frat boys from Tennessee coming in and enjoying it like, ‘Oh, that was so rockin’,’ Presher says. “They might not go see Mean Girls on Broadway, but maybe now they will.”
Joey Derby, who stars as a spitting image of Matthew Lillard’s Stu in the show, says expensive tickets, time commitments and stale “clap and you go home” experiences can make Gen Z-ers feel ostracized from theater. But as shows become more interactive, more engaging to the audience, it alleviates those misconceptions. It also helps to have local theaters championing other local theaters.
“I’ve heard Troy at speeches for the audience say, ‘If you like it here, go support the other local theaters,’” says Rivera. “When people come to do anything, and they like what they’re seeing, they’re encouraged to continue that.”
The Las Vegas theater scene continues to get bolder with every season. For instance, Vegas Theatre Company and Las Vegas Horror Show’s risky R-rated horror spectacle Abandon took the scene by storm last Halloween with a shockingly kinky immersive story that had theatergoers returning for seconds. And VTC’s new Cluelesque, billed as a musical-burlesque whodunit and based on the 1985 comedy movie Clue (which, itself, was based on the classic board game), is already selling out and disrupting the traditional theater standard.
“Yes, it’s an art, but it should be sustaining,” Heard says. “I think that’s the goal of some of us in Las Vegas Downtown, at least Vegas Theatre Company, A Public Fit and myself, is creating professional theater that can become sustainable work. It’s not just a fun side gig.”
The ongoing performances of Scream’d will be joined by other Majestic shows during the upcoming season, including The Lifespan of a Fact (February 15-March 4), Jane Austen’s Emma (March 7-24) and Ride the Cyclone (April 18-May 19).
The fact that Scream’d has become a modestly-sized cultural phenomenon is still unreal to Heard.
“All these elements have really come together to create this unique thing,” he says. “I certainly hope it’s not lightning in a bottle ... or if it is, I hope it’s a really big bottle.”
Heard says Scream’d has generated a lot of interest from international producers, but there’s still plenty of logistics to work out. For now, he’s happy to remain in the comfort of Downtown, with the rest of his talented community.
“I had a couple of people ask me, ‘Do you want to take the show to the Strip?’ Absolutely not,” Heard says. “There’s no way I would ever want to go to a casino with this, because my tiny little storefront on Main Street is seeing people booking tickets, flying in from all over the country who’ve never been to Las Vegas before, who saw the show pop up on TikTok, who on the spur of a moment, decided to come see the show. We are as much a destination as Shania Twain, as The Beatles Love. That’s really unheard of.”
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