Controversial director Brian Clowdus returns with ‘The Salem Experience’

After being named director of the Serenbe Playhouse 2019 production of “Pocahontas,” Native American theater professional Tara Moses said she tried to emphasize the tragic nature of the Pocahontas story. But, she wrote on Facebook, Clowdus wanted a “sexier” lead and “happy” songs. Clowdus, she wrote, “wanted Disney’s Pocahontas.”

Black actor Terrence Smith posted online his disgust with the atmosphere at Serenbe after a cast member injected additional racial epithets into the script of “Ragtime” and a white child actor spit on him during “Shenandoah.”

Deborah Griffin, chair of the Serenbe Institute for Art, Culture & the Environment, which included the Serenbe Playhouse, said in June, 2020, “It’s clear that the culture was pretty toxic for actors that were in the (productions).”

Clowdus left Serenbe in November 2019, and the following year the theater group was disbanded. Clowdus, once hailed nationally, became persona non grata locally.

Then came a most curious transformation. Clowdus moved to Panama City, Florida, revealed himself to be a born-again conservative Republican, stumped door-to-door campaigning for Donald Trump and announced he would run for the Republican nomination to a seat in the State House.

And he created his own production company, staging outdoor extravaganzas in cities around the country, although a hail of criticism followed him. Two months ago, when he tried to stage a production of “Oklahoma” at the Blue Toad Cidery in Roseland, Virginia, the cider house was swamped with social media criticism from Atlantans still smarting from the Serenbe experience, so Clowdus moved it to a private farm nearby called Mount Rouge.

Atlanta theater professionals queried for a comment about Clowdus’ return to Atlanta bemoaned giving him any coverage. Several asked not to be identified.

Griffin offered no comment when contacted this month.

“It’s very important for the narrative that he’s crafting for himself that there be some event that is perceived as a victory lap,” said Atlanta playwright, director and actor Topher Payne.

That victory lap would be “The Salem Experience,” an outdoor production by Brian Clowdus Experiences.

The show appears to capitalize on Clowdus’ perception that he has been persecuted by the same kind of hysteria that, in the 1690s, prompted witch hunts in Salem, Massachusetts, and resulted in judges ordering the hanging deaths of innocent people. (Despite popular belief, nobody was burned at the stake.)

Clowdus uses the familiar conservative trope “cancel culture” in the production’s promotional material.

Bree Clowdus

Bree Clowdus

“We are living in a modern-day Salem,” a press release reads. “Rumors & social media posts are taken as truth. The mentally deranged are considered wise.” It concludes: “You all wanted a witch hunt ... well now you’ve got one.”

During a break at a recent rehearsal at a secluded location in Senoia, Clowdus, in a sleeveless black T-shirt and closely-cropped beard, reflected on the moment.

“Y’all want me out of this town, y’all want me burned at the stake,” he said, striding around an ancient-looking cabin that serves as the set for the show. ”But guess what? You’ve given me the energy to come back and create this.”

The show promises to have some of Clowdus’ celebrated showmanship. There are hangings, an immolation, along with song, dance and romance.

The setting is out in the wilds of Coweta County, where cell phones don’t work, beside a pond and surrounded by woods. At the center of the action is a structure that looks like a 19th century general store, but it was constructed more recently for scenes from “The Walking Dead” and the Shia LaBeouf film “Lawless.”

“Salem” has already run into trouble. The opening night performance Oct. 14 was canceled at the last minute due, said Clowdus, to a power outage. He sent an email explaining the cancellation a half-hour before a VIP gathering was scheduled, and long after many Atlanta patrons had already begun the 30-plus-mile drive south.

Bree Clowdus

Bree Clowdus

Theater for conservatives

Clowdus has found like-minded collaborators for the show. At a rehearsal prior to opening, several cast members wore Project Veritas ball caps, which were gifts from James O’Keefe, who played Curly in a Clowdus’ summer production of “Oklahoma.”

O’Keefe founded Project Veritas, a far-right activist organization that uses secret recordings and edited video to entrap organizations and media outlets, such as Planned Parenthood and CNN. An effort in 2017 to punk the Washington Post by planting a false story about Alabama U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore backfired when the Post checked the story, caught Veritas in the lie and won a Pulitzer.

Ariana Dewing, 32, of Los Angeles, is a dancer and choreographer for “The Salem Experience.” She is also a spokesperson for Turning Point, a conservative organization on U.S. campuses that keeps a “watchlist” of professors who allegedly advance leftist thought. It invites such speakers as far-right polemic political commentator Milo Yiannopoulos to universities and sent buses of students to the Jan. 6 pro-Trump protest in Washington, D.C., that resulted in the insurrection.

“Brian didn’t cast me in any way because of my beliefs,” Dewing said. “I don’t think people want to combine the two, art and politics. We’re not creating politicized art; we’re creating art based on the times.”

Protests to the contrary, Clowdus has yoked his political and theatrical ambitions together, introducing an offshoot of Brian Clowdus Experiences called GOProductions, “A Grand Old Production Company,” to stage theatrical events for “conservative communities.” On Twitter he explains, “Even right wingers love & need theatre.”

A few days before the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Clowdus snapped a photo with Jacob Chansley, known as the QAnon Shaman, at a Dalton Trump rally. Chansley was among those who stormed the Capitol and later pleaded guilty to a felony. Clowdus said he didn’t know who Chansley was when he took the photo, but it only fueled his detractors’ ire.

Dewing’s husband, Eric Heister, is handling the special effects for “The Salem Experience.” While the actors practiced one of the musical numbers, Heister examined the area where flames would be ignited using tiki-torch fuel and tested combinations of wood and fuel. “I don’t want any vegetation around here,” he said.

Inadequate safety measures on the set were one of the criticisms aimed at Clowdus by his crew at Serenbe, particularly during the 2018 production of “Titanic,” in which characters leaped from a four-story recreation of the steamship into a lake on the Serenbe property.

Bree Clowdus

Bree Clowdus

But Julie Trammel, whose stature and red hair makes her suited as the evil accuser Bridget in “Salem,” was also part of “Titanic,” and said she had no safety concerns during that production. Actors could decide for themselves whether they wanted to jump, she said.

In terms of COVID-19 safety, there is no vaccination requirement for cast or audience, and masks are optional. “I’m probably the only one here vaccinated,” said Tatiana Harman, 26, who plays Sarah Good.

As for Clowdus’ health, he said he has given up alcohol and gets a full night’s sleep. This, he said, is how he can stage shows in Texas, Virginia and Georgia, and run a political campaign in Florida.

A different stage

Philip “Griff” Griffitts is Clowdus’ competitor for the Republican nomination in the State House district that includes Panama City. Though Clowdus recently had a successful fund-raiser sponsored by Atlanta’s Log Cabin Republicans, Griffitts has out-raised Clowdus $131,615 to $20,626, according to the Florida Politics news outlet.

Clowdus is sanguine about the numbers and about his chances in next August’s primary. “You only need so much money to run a House race,” he said. “I have four times more donors, and they’re all small donors.”

Griffitts is a Bay County commissioner whose father was mayor of Panama City for 18 years. But Clowdus believes his lack of experience is an asset. “People want people who have never run for office before, people don’t want career politicians.”

He’s had plenty of experience shrugging off slings and arrows. The criticism of his tenure in Atlanta has toughened his skin. “It’s insane the things people will say about me,” he said. “Talk about a year of good training to run for public office. It’s crocodile skin at this point.”

He suggests, in fact, that the rejection by the Atlanta theater community helped lead him to his new career.

“It was heartbreaking,” he said, “to have people who loved you say they never loved you. I had two choices, to beg forgiveness or dig my heels into the sand. This was the catalyst to my coming out of the closet with my politics.”

The jury is out on whether enough theater-goers in Atlanta are willing to overlook the controversy surrounding Clowdus to make “The Salem Experience” a success. Meanwhile, barring any more power outages, falsely accused witches will continue to be hanged throughout the month of October in Senoia.

THEATER PREVIEW

“The Salem Experience.” Through Oct. 31. $39-69; VIP $99. The outdoor, roaming, on-your-feet-production will only be canceled in the event of heavy rain. Refunds require the purchase of $5 rain insurance. 1739 Elders Mill Road, Senoia. brianclowdus.com