The Empty Space Theater is hosting the original play Geeks vs. Zombies that has tongue-in-cheek references to movies, music, comic books and video games with violence and humor mixed in.
The play centers on four individuals, “Blair” (David Rock), “MacReady” (James Kopp), “Wallace” (Thor Reese) and “Loomis” (Mike Solko) as they fight off zombies to save themselves by using zombie and other movie tactics.
Geeks vs. Zombies writer Rock, 30, explained where the idea came from while talking to the other horror-comedy play writer Kopp, 32.
“We were looking at doing ‘Night of the Living Dead’ and James Kopp said that he had an idea for a zombie show – I said, ‘Let’s do that instead.’
Rock added, “He had an idea for script-wise and I said, ‘Can I help you write it?’ Usually, James doesn’t like to work with other people, but he said yes. I helped him write the script and just came up with it as we wrote. He did a lot of research on zombie movies – that’s where the play came from. We knew we needed a lot of combat, zombies, so everything was a given, dialogue and such.”
During the first two nights of the play, the play received great praise and sold out.
Kopp said, “We’ve put a lot of work into it, so it’s nice to know. With so many shows in town because it’s not a theater town, a lot of work goes into shows that get 10 or 15 people a night. To be selling out is really nice.”
Kopp referred to a few audience members who talked during the play, which is known as a mortal sin in theater, but hoped for better when he said, “We’re geeks man. We got to set a standard.”
Rock added, “The huge response is great. It’s payoff – we’ve been working so hard.”
“For the audience, every time a hand comes through the glass, just a gasp [heard] or when a zombie busts through – for the whole front row to sit back in their seats is absolutely amazing for us. It’s better than we could have expected.”
“We’ve run our own companies before. We each have our own perspective things, since we were longtime buddies, [we] might as well put something together and it came out great,” said Rock.
George Spelvin, a 20-year veteran actor who played Milo, said about the first two nights of the play, “We’ve had great response from the audiences and they’ve been wonderful.”
Spelvin said how he got involved with Geeks vs. Zombies.
“I met James Kopp and he asked me to be in the show and I said ‘yeah.’ I read the script and thought it was fantastic and thought, ‘I’d like to do this show.'”
Rock said about the lengthy playwriting, “We started writing this in January, February and going through the process. This has been our lives for the last seven, eight months.”
He added, “Anyone who does a zombie show in Bakersfield is probably going to sell out.”
However, he said the difference is that “it’s a really dark show with the lights, blood, and broken glass.”
The next shows are Oct. 22, 23, 28, 29 and a midnight show on Oct. 30. The play is free to the public and there is a suggested donation of $8 for students and $10 for adults. Doors open at 7:30 p.m., and the plays start at 8 p.m.