Blackout heads back to L.A. for off-season screams

Last Halloween season, if you passed by the corner of 2nd Street and Broadway, you might have wondered what all the quivering, shrieking people were doing streaming out of that darkened office building.

The explanation was the first L.A. edition of the New York City-based extreme haunted house Blackout. For a few weeks in late fall, Angelenos willfully submitted to Blackout’s deep dive into psycho-sexual torture scenarios and total sensory deprivation. L.A. horror fans must be a masochistic bunch — tickets were sold out, and Blackout had to add on a week of dates just to meet the demand for heebie-jeebies.

Now Blackout has announced an L.A. off-season series in May for those who just can’t wait until Halloween to commune with uncut terror.

“Blackout actually started as an off-season theater event, and in a way, these off-season events are much more true to the original vision of Blackout,” said Josh Harper, a rep for Blackout. “The off-season events are significantly longer, more intense, and more personalized. The audience participation goes several steps further than it did for Halloween.”

The shows, which will take place at a to-be-announced West Hollywood locale, begin May 13 and go on sale at 10 a.m. Friday. There are fewer than 200 tickets available for the whole run of the show, so fans should rally their fight-or-flight instincts quickly. If you liked the plot elements even more than being left totally alone in a pitch-dark room for endless jittery minutes, this might be your flavor of fear.

“Audience members have no choice but to comply or call ‘safety,’” Harper said. “With only a few tickets released per evening, audience members are able to spend significantly more time with our unique characters and delve deeper into the twisted stories.”

Begins May 13. Tickets on sale Friday at https://www.blackouthh.com.

— August Brown