The Act of Being Saved: Hell House and the Salvific Performative.

Across the United States, tens of thousands of souls are saved during Halloween. The mechanism for these salvations is Hell House--an Evangelical Christian haunted house that substitutes ghosts and goblins for "sinners" and "sin." These conversions occur through "the salvific performative," a speech act that embodies a convert's new faith, altering his or her biography and identity. This essay interrogates the salvific performative by theorizing how it operates within Hell House performances. To understand how conversions are created, one must understand the context by which they occur, and in Hell House, this is accomplished through a tactical deployment of violent theatrics and a manipulation of reality through theatre, which enables audience members to see theatrical representation as "truth." Finally, the essay suggests how Hell House's particular ability represents a particular manifestation of representation geared to transform its audience, and what the implications of this are on the medium of theatre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]