There was a time when the idea of theater was closely linked to one venue, a stage and a seated audience. But storytelling can now often expand beyond theater walls.
Unbound Productions’ Wicked Lit, which performed its first show in 2009 at Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills, has been an innovator in these outside-the-box productions. Its debut was a fully immersive, moving show with three different plays on three different parts of the grounds. Its 2010 show took place at Mountain View mausoleum and cemetery in Altadena — a location that became a regular host for the theater company until 2019.
“We never sought out to do site-specific immersive work, but when the opportunity arose, we went for it,” said Jonathan Josephson, artistic director of Unbound Productions. “We really were in over our heads, didn’t know how complicated it was gonna be, did five performances, ended up selling out and said, ‘OK, maybe this is the way Wicked Lit is gonna manifest. With my producing partners, I knew we wanted to do horror stories as theater and we just grew from there.”
And grow it did, including other projects like History Lit and Mystery Lit — but then the pandemic hit. Unbound Productions went dark in 2020 and has remained so until this Halloween season. The group is producing an event at Anaheim’s Chance Theater, Oct. 29 through Nov. 2, with two stage shows — “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Las Lloronas” — along with Halloween-themed arts and artisan fair La Placita of Curiosities, a Wicked Lit museum, live music and immersive performances.
“(It) just sort of took until this year for me to say, ‘OK I’m gonna muscle up the energy and try and make it happen,’” Josephson said.
He said because the 2025 Eaton Fire impacted the grounds at Mountain View, Wicked Lit isn’t in Altadena for its return. But the Chance Theater, where Josephson is a resident artist and marketing director, will host Wicked Lit 2026: “La Llorona” and “The Headless Horseman.”
“It just all seemed to come together when Halloween landed on a Saturday,” Josephson said. “That was probably the real impetus is when I looked at the calendar in January and said, ‘Wow, Halloween 10/31 is a Saturday, that’s good for Wicked Lit.”
John Thvedt, Tanya Raisa and Michael Prichard perform in Wicked Lit’s 2010 cemetery production, “The Unnamable.” Photo courtesy of Daniel Kitayama 
Lisa McNeely performs in the 2014 Wicked Lit premiere of “Las Lloronas.” Photo courtesy of Ellen Smiler 
Melissa Lugo performs as the Witch in the 2014 Wicked Lit premiere of “Las Lloronas.” Photo courtesy of Chance Theater/Ellen Smiler
Most of Wicked Lit’s productions have taken place around the Halloween season.
“Up until now, the fall show of Wicked Lit has been three plays that are produced in three different places in whatever venue we’re in — which is wonderful and a lot of fun, but really hard,” Josephson said. “So this year’s show, as we’re rebuilding and reestablishing the company, we wanted to try and find a way to make an incredible event on the scale that people would expect, but make it just a little bit easier to produce technically.”
Josephson adapted “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” from the short story by Washington Irving and it was part of Wicked Lit’s first production in 2009. It was also performed in 2013 at Mountain View, where the horse chase with the horseman and Ichabod Crane happened in the cemetery.
“That was really incredible,” he said. “Then the Chance actually did my longer adaptation of ‘Legend of Sleepy Hollow’ … in 2015, so it’s been a minute. But that play’s been around and it’s actually been produced all over the world, which has been really, really wonderful.”
“Las Lloronas” premiered in 2014 at Mountain View as an original play Josephson adapted from La Llorona myths and historical events. The production uses storytelling, music and dance to bring the famous Mexican folk legend to life, telling the tales of desperate mothers who kill their children by drowning them in a river.
“I just thought that the two of them side by side would be a really interesting range of what horror and Gothic literature and cautionary tales and haunting stories can look like, and they’re also just two of my favorites,” Josephson said.
Both plays will be performed on the Chance Theater’s main stage in front of a seated audience. But the pre-show and post-show will bring back the immersive kinds of performances Wicked Lit has become known for.
Wicked Lit regulars might notice some familiar faces on stage. This year’s cast includes Unbound Productions veterans Kevin Dulude, who performed in Wicked Lit shows from 2015 through 2018, and Joe Camareno and Melissa Lugo, who were in “Las Lloronas” in 2014.
Lugo reprises her roles as Doña Marina and the Witch.
EVENT DETAILS
Wicked Lit 2026: ‘La Llorona’ and ‘The Headless Horseman’
When: 7:30 p.m. and 9 p.m, Oct. 29 – Nov. 2
Where: Chance Theater, 5522 E. La Palma Ave., Anaheim
Cost: $45-$70
More Info: wicked-lit.org
“I’m very, very excited because you very rarely get that kind of opportunity to come back so many years later and get to perform the same role,” she said. “As an actor, it’s a training ground like no other because you perform, with the Wicked Lit productions, you perform your piece multiple times in an evening …. And there’s something really magical about you (starting) the run and then it’s like you just go and you don’t really have time to think too much or analyze your performance, because then you’ve got to reset and get right back into it for the next audience.”
Camareno, who makes his return as El Diablo, is traveling from Palm Springs for the production.
“It was my Wicked Lit debut and it was a really incredible experience having to perform in a mausoleum,” he said. “I’m playing the devil. So, if you can imagine El Diablo, walking around the mausoleum, as the devil you know, telling people to behave. It was a very memorable experience and the show was great.”
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