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Nightmare on A Street Mail Tribune / Bob Pennell Technical director Jordan Pease gets some skeletons out of the closet in time to arrange "The Hall of Infinity," a portion of the spooky goings-on at "The Gallery of Living Nightmares," which opened Friday night at the Nuwandart Gallery on A Street in Ashland. By SARAH LEMON A troupe of local actors have volunteered to scare Halloween lovers silly to benefit an Ashland non-profit gallery and the American Red Cross. "We're doing this a labor of love," said organizer and actor Robin Downward. "The Gallery of Living Nightmares" was lovingly crafted over the course of a month by Downward and his partner, technical director Jordan Pease. But the Halloween installation at Nuwandart Gallery sets up a surrealistic scenario that leaves visitors playing the role of lab rats. As gallery-goers line up outside the A Street building, Ruthaford Maximillion III of Mysterium Inc. informs them via a small black-and-white television that paranormal activity has been confirmed in the building. His white-coated scientists with clipboards are trying to discover the effects of ghosts on the living. If you show no fear, he says, no harm will come to you. But former gallery patrons trapped by the resident spirit comprise a terrifying living exhibit. A witch conjuring a cloud a swirling smoked in the vestibule warns the spirit that she won't let it harm the patrons. With the room's sparse light reflected off the witch's crystal ball, visitors are blind to the black-robed creature that materializes out of the walls and chases them into the next room at the witch's urging to run. "I was startled many a time," said Ashland resident Ashleigh Adams. "I think it was more startling than terrifying, but there were plenty of times when I jumped and screamed." While Nuwandart owner and artist Johnathan Aaron hurries visitors out of the first room with his appearing and disappearing ghoul act, a little time can be spent pondering his installation that confronts visitors in the next room once they've crossed a rickety white bridge. A dream of supermarket meat sections inspired the untitled work that features a saran-wrapped skeleton adorned with streaks of a liquid red substance, Aaron said. Upon further inspection, the visitor may notice hacksaws and other metallic torture devices in the hands of several small dolls - one whose arms are fashioned from a set of canine jawbones. Body parts abound in "The Gallery of Living Nightmares." If visitors turn 180 degrees from Aaron's installation, a woman pops out of glowing television set offering a hand or a foot - two for the price of one - on the "home-chopping network." Fleeing through the "hall of infinity," past a murderous clown and up the stairs into the spirit's crypt, visitors face their last fictional challenge - getting out of the haunted gallery without being hacked to bits by a chainsaw-wielding madman. Newandart owner Rob Pendell dons a hockey mask and menaces visitors - who plaster themselves against the hall's apparently blood-smeared white walls - with a whining chainsaw. The saw is missing it's chain, but Pendell's performance shakes up children and adults alike. "The response we're trying to elicit is a little fear because it's Halloween," he said. "I thought it was scary but really fun," said 9-year-old Saba Buser, of Ashland. "The Gallery of Living Nightmares" shows every evening through Halloween from 8 p.m. to midnight at Nuwandart, 258 A Street, Ashland. Admission if $5 for adults and $3 for children under age 12. Ticket proceeds go to the Nuwandart gallery collective and the Red Cross. Reach reporter Sarah Lemon at 776-4487, or e-mail [email protected] . Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.