Welcome to Night Vale in Largo at the Coronet in Los Angeles, California in October 2013
Two weekends ago, the widely popular podcast Welcome to Night Vale performed a live episode at the Lincoln Theatre in Washington to a sold-out crowd. It’s hard to imagine an act that would attract this many people with multi-colored hair and this many punks, geeks and unabashed nerds outside of maybe Comic-Con. Yet when the lights went down and all of the fans heard the voice we’ve listened to for so many hours speak out a real human mouth, it became something really special.
WtNV’s blend of bizarre horror and small-town normality is an addicting and fascinating one, enough to bring together a real legion of fans drawn to its weird world, surreal humor, and interesting characters. In just short of three years, Night Vale has become one of the best and most wonderfully eccentric fictional towns in storytelling, rivaling the likes of Twin Peaks, The Simpson’s Springfield, and Pawnee in Indiana. In July 2013, it hit No. 1 on iTunes’ top podcasts list, and still broadcasts episodes and holds live shows in venues across the country.
The podcast is filled with hilarious people, groups and organizations — from the malevolent and always conveniently busy-during-crises City Council to the army of middle-schoolers who always save the day with weapons hidden inside large works of literature to the spurned ex-mayoral candidates Hiram McDaniels (a literal five-headed dragon), and the aptly named Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home. Yet with a few exceptions, most of these characters are only known through the voice of one Cecil Palmer (Cecil Baldwin), Night Vale Community Radio’s erstwhile host.
One of the wonderful things about WtNV is that few characters are given concrete physical descriptions, and even the ones that are leave so much room for personal interpretation that each person’s vision of Night Vale remains their own, unique world. No one really knows what Cecil Palmer looks like, as he’s described as “not short or tall, fat or thin.” Yet Welcome to Night Vale’s live episode brings people to the previously disembodied podcast voices. Anyone who goes will see what the real Cecil Baldwin looks like and will have to add a further level of imagination to reach the same state as a normal episode. Is it worth it? Should you just shut your eyes during a live show? How is a live podcast (especially one so narratively-based as WtNV) fundamentally different than a recorded episode?
A live episode of Welcome to Night Vale does intrude the real Cecil (and an assortment of other townsfolk) into our view of the city, while also giving us the added disconnect between what Cecil is saying he’s doing and seeing and what’s actually happening on stage. The live performance does take a little bit of the imaginative magic out of the show, but it more than makes up for it with an added sense of audience participation and a general comedic tone greater than anything the normal podcast episodes achieve. The real Cecil Baldwin has to continue on recording, never stopping to accommodate laughter, never getting to actually see the faces of his fans.
Without delving into specific spoilers, this year’s live show crafts a story that presents the audience as members of Night Vale in a fun twist that embodies the world so well that it seems strange it hasn’t been brought up before. For anyone worried about just going to see a man talk for an hour and half: fear not. There are multiple guest actors, live music by Dessa, and all the assorted segments of the show we know and love — weird and menacing advertisements supposedly made for real-world products, new and strange Night Vale organizations, moments between Cecil and his scientist boyfriend trapped in another dimension Carlos, and even an appearance by Cecil’s brother-in-law, the one man he hates more than anything in the world.
The likelihood of someone randomly going to see a Welcome to Night Vale live show without being a huge fan is negligible, so the entire show acts as a huge love letter to the rabid fanbase that turned a quirky little experiment into one of the most popular podcasts ever. The show’s penchant for comedy — much of it stemming from the incongruities between the dark and strange things Cecil says and the manner in which he says them — flourishes with a crowd to laugh along with you. There’s a palpable sense of community and pure joy at one of these shows; everyone’s a huge fan, drawn to similar references and past callbacks.
Over its almost three years of existence, Welcome to Night Vale has changed in some important ways. The overarching plots have grown in importance, straying from the random, disconnected events of the show’s beginnings. The tone has also subtly shifted a bit away from surreal horror and a strange sense of menace toward the comedic, with Cecil purposefully dropping his “NPR voice” more often and speaking to the audience as a bunch of good friends. The live show is a great example of this shift, and it likely propelled the podcast more in this direction. Welcome to Night Vale is more of a community now, closer to a real town – a town that exists across the world in every person who listens and conjures up their own phantasmagoric version of this wonderful place. By necessity, the touring live show can’t feed directly into the main show’s plot and does miss out on some of the creepy elements that WtNV is so good at, but the unified sense of community and the many, many laughs make it a worthwhile experience for any fan of the podcast.
