Rochester Fringe Festival 2025
Ministry; Or, The Surgical Revelation
Holy Bone! Productions
Genre: Experimental, Horror, Interactive
Venue: The Spirit Room
Festival: Rochester Fringe Festival
Low Down
Ministry; Or The Surgical Revelation is a medical examination unlike anything you’ve ever seen before. Holy Bone! Productions brings us an interactive medical suspense that discusses the spiritual in a new lens.
Review
Ministry; Or The Surgical Revelation is a medical examination unlike anything you’ve ever seen before. Holy Bone! Productions brings us an interactive medical suspense that discusses the spiritual in a new lens.
The Spirit Room is the perfect venue for this eerie event. The bar is well known for its haunting appearance, including creepy dolls, bones, and taxidermy. At times, one might not be able to differentiate the show’s props and set from the actual bar decorations.
Upon entering the venue, we’re immersed into the medical theater of Dr. Darwin, complete with a chalkboard, a surgical table with a body covered by a white sheet, and am instrument table with all sorts of scalpels and supplies ready for the first slice of the evening.
The venue manager warns the audience ahead of time that there are elements of participation throughout the show, and surveys the room. Those who wanted to opt out of participating were given a yellow wristband. Those who would especially like to be included were given top hats to be easily idenitified in the audience (they later became prestigious doctors as well). The intentional planning of allowing audience members to opt into participating was a much appreciated consent-based approach to handling the show.
Dr. Darwin writes “PAIN” on the chalkboard in large letters early on in the work, and refers to pain as “a vital part of the healing process”. Pain becomes a focal point of the plot.
One of the most interactive elements of the show involved Ms. Comfort Cross, otherwise known as the woman on the table under the white sheet. We meet Ms. Cross and her ailments early on in the play, conveyed through dialogue and brilliant makeup and costuming. At one point, one of her boils pops and pus splatters on the stage. In another moment, an audience member (referred to as another doctor) is called to the stage to make a small incision under Mr. Cross’s chest to remove a piece of her ribcage. She later begins to remove pieces of her flesh and offers them to audience members, telling them they have “been saved”. Ms. Cross begs for audience interaction.
Anyone who enjoys an experimental, eerie period piece would love Ministry; Or The Surgical Revelation.
