Nashville troupe Cherry Bomb is scheduled to perform Final Girl: A Horror Musical at City Winery Nashville on Halloween, October 31, at 7:30 p.m. The production is built around audience input, giving the performers a prompt to shape a horror story and its music as the show unfolds.
Nashville Lifestyles describes a format in which one audience suggestion sets the story in motion. Its event description pairs familiar horror elements—including creepy cabins, cursed dolls, masked killers, and suspicious basements—with songs, harmonies, and choreography created during the performance, as the plot moves toward a final-girl showdown. The listing says the material is not scripted in advance, so the show changes from performance to performance, according to Nashville Lifestyles.
A Spontaneous Scare Built in Real Time
A separate event listing on eventticketscenter.com calls it “a completely spontaneous and original horror musical created on the spot,” and says the format ensures no two performances are ever the same. The listing also notes that City Winery Nashville offers table seating with clear sightlines to the stage, alongside a curated menu of food and wine pairings for audience members.
Final Girl takes place at City Winery Nashville, located at 609 Lafayette St., and is listed on the Nashville Lifestyles events calendar under dance and performing arts, film and theater, and live music. The pairing of horror and musical theater, made up in real time by a local cast, puts an improv spin on a Halloween night that otherwise could just mean another haunted house or costume party.
Who's Behind the Chaos
Cherry Bomb describes itself as a collective of Nashville improvisers focused on musical improv, according to a Third Coast Improv Fest page for the group, which states the troupe is bringing the power of Music City to musical improv. That page lists the cast as Susan Gleiser, Elizabeth Berry, Amelia Rossettie, Caroline Conner, Gabe Cyrus, Briley Barnett, and Alex Dolezal. The seven performers are tasked with building the horror narrative from an audience suggestion, using songs, choreography, and whatever turns the idea takes.
Nashville’s Improv Roots
One documented marker of local comedy institution-building came in April 2016, when Third Coast Comedy Club launched a Kickstarter that received pledges from 211 backers, according to Third Coast Comedy Club. Cherry Bomb’s musical-improv focus, described above by Third Coast Improv Fest, places Final Girl within that local comedy context and gives the Halloween show its musical foundation.
