Interview: Eva Kaminsky Faces Her Fears in PARANORMAL ACTIVITY

For Eva Kaminsky, the scariest part of Broadway’s Paranormal Activity may not be the ghosts. It may be the doorbell. “I will say anytime the doorbell rings, I am terrified,” Kaminsky reveals. “I stand backstage before I go on, and I still hold my ears.”

That admission feels especially fitting for a production built around making the ordinary terrifying. Inspired by the film franchise, Levi Holloway’s Paranormal Activity follows James and Lou, a young couple who move from Chicago to London hoping for a fresh start, only to discover that whatever troubled them may have followed them. Kaminsky plays Etheline Cotgrave, a spiritualist and podcaster who enters their increasingly unsettling world.

Kaminsky joined the production in Boston and came to it already loving horror, even if she was less familiar with the larger Paranormal Activity franchise. “I love horror. I love reading horror. I love watching horror,” she says. “So I read the script and I thought, ‘This is a brilliant play.’ Besides just being actually scary on the page and wondering how they would do it, I loved the play.”

What caught her attention about Etheline was not an opportunity to play up the supernatural, but the opposite. “I loved Etheline’s simplicity,” Kaminsky explains. “I read it, and I thought, ‘The simpler and more honest, the better.’”

That honesty is important because Etheline could easily become the familiar horror archetype of the mysterious medium who arrives armed with answers. Instead, Kaminsky grounds her in sincere belief. “I just approach her by being as truly honest as possible,” she states. “And I think for Etheline, for what I’ve come up with for myself, is that she really believes all of this.”

For Kaminsky, Etheline’s desire to help is equally sincere. “She really believes it and believes what people tell her, and she really, really wants to help people.”

That sincerity helps reveal what lies beneath Paranormal Activity’s scares. Its most frightening questions are not necessarily about what may be lurking in the darkness, but what people carry within themselves. “I think it’s about looking at your own inner demons, how you live with them, and how you make amends to the people that are affected,” Kaminsky points out. “The inner demons are stronger than the outer demons. That’s really what I think it comes down to.”

To that end, the franchise’s familiar maxim of “Places aren’t haunted. People are,” consequently takes on a more human dimension. For Etheline, speaking difficult truths can itself become an act of release. “I think she believes that if you can speak your truth, your past, and the things that are hard, that it releases something,” Kaminsky adds.

She sees that idea extending beyond the supernatural. “That motif sort of goes throughout the show. Say the thing you can’t,” Kaminsky continues. “I think in life that can be true too. Saying the thing you can’t, and depending on who you say it to, saying it to another human can unlock something.”

Of course, Paranormal Activity still has the more immediate assignment to scare an audience. The production employs approximately 40 illusions, and performing amid carefully constructed theatrical scares presents Kaminsky with an unusual acting challenge. She must know what is coming while convincing audiences Etheline does not. “I think it’s my job for the people seeing this that it’s as electrifying for me every single show so that it’s equally electrifying and surprising for them too,” she notes. “The play doesn’t work unless things are happening in the moment to the characters.”

That commitment is physical. “I just buy in. I just decide that I am going there, and I get scared. I allow myself to be scared again and again,” Kaminsky says. “I don’t phone that in. That’s always real.”

Audiences return that energy with screams, gasps, nervous laughter and, occasionally, warnings shouted toward the stage. “This show is so singular,” she explains. “We all find the reactions to be like another character.” She adds, “It’s very satisfying to hear people scream and then laugh. It’s really great.”

That enthusiasm apparently extends to some familiar Broadway faces, too. Kaminsky shared that Patti LuPone had recently been in the audience, something that delighted the cast. “I’m psyched that she was there,” Kaminsky admits.

LuPone may not be the only unexpected horror fan finding her way to the August Wilson Theatre. Kaminsky has noticed that the production seems to be inspiring people to reveal their own affection for the genre. “Maybe she [LuPone] loves scary things,” Kaminsky posits. “I feel like there’s a lot of people coming out of the woodwork and saying, ‘I love scary things, I want to be scared.’”

That communal response may also be Paranormal Activity’s greatest advantage over its cinematic predecessors. “In theater, we’re with you. The story is unfolding in real time,” Kaminsky says. “You’re there with them, in their house, in a way that the screen removes you,” she emphasizes. “It’s an intangible energy that we all experience together.”

Moreover, the recognizable Paranormal Activity name could also introduce that experience to people who do not regularly attend Broadway. In addition to reasonably priced tickets, by Broadway standards at least, the production also currently offers $40 rush and lottery options, creating lower-cost entry points for audiences curious about how a horror franchise translates to the stage. “Our show allows people who have never seen Broadway—some of them haven’t even been to a play—to come and experience it,” Kaminsky remarks.

For an actor who describes herself as someone who already believed there are things we do not understand, months spent surrounded by staged hauntings have not made her more eager to investigate strange noises at home. “I just want to respect the things I don’t understand,” Kaminsky says. “If I came upon something like what is in the play, I would run. I would definitely run.”