House of the Exquisite Corpse 2023

Rough House Theater's annual Halloween seasonal haunt, House of the Exquisite Corpse III, rises from the dead for its third reign of puppet theater terror.

This year's peep show/puppet theater anthology is inspired by the book “Our Homes and How to Keep Them Healthy,” published in 1883 by Robert Brudenell Carter. A team of top Chicago puppet theater artists have each selected different chapters, like “The Evils of the Common Closet” and “The Dangers of Dust,” to unleash and lay open their darkest creative impulses. 

For 2023, House of the Exquisite Corpse III stitches together six all-new puppet peep-shows newly created by Chicago artists who work in multiple disciplines, including Pablo Monterrubio-Benet and Grace Needlman, Tom Lee and Sam Lewis, Corey Smith, Claire Bauman, Chio Cabrera and Jacky Kelsey, Justin D’Acci and Sion Silva, Ken Buckingham, and Felix Mayes and Kevin Michael Wesson. Process directors are Claire Saxe and Mike Oleon.

The Press

If you want to move beyond schlock and shock into an elevated horror experience this October, look no further than House of the Exquisite Corpse—A Haunted Puppet Anthology…!

-Kimzyn Campbell, Chicago Reader
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Recommended for audiences aged 13 and over.