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“You ever sit too long in the cheap seats and feel the air get colder? That ain’t draft, kid. That’s the ghost of Act II.”

Description - Exterior

The Oriental’s façade is a fever dream in terra cotta—onion domes, minarets, and carved dragons all crammed into a towering box along Randolph. At night, the marquee glows like it’s trying to lure in moths, and the windows above stay dark no matter what’s playing. Nobody remembers the statues ever being cleaned, but they never look dirty. Just... watching.

Description - Interior

Inside’s a jungle of velvet, gold leaf, and old perfume. The main house stretches up into shadow, lit only by a chandelier that hums if you sit beneath it too long. Ushers swear the mezzanine sometimes seats itself. Below stage, the green rooms go on too deep—past old costume closets and cracked dressing mirrors into halls not marked on the blueprints. No one's mapped them. No one's tried twice.

History

Opened in 1926 as a luxury movie palace, the Oriental rode the tail end of the jazz age into the hard edge of the Depression. It played host to silent films, orchestras, war bonds, and weird intermission acts that left stains behind. Rumors say a magician vanished live on stage in ’37 and never came back. Theatres all took a dip post-war—but the Oriental never really closed. It just got... quieter.

Owned By

Bennie Balvano, a low-key fixer with old connections to the Outfit and a quiet deal with the IATSE union. He keeps the place running as part theater, part favor bank, part front.

Employees

• Marla Genesee – house manager, knows the place better than she knows her kids
• Tommy "Stubs" Gracchi – usher, missing two fingers, always watching the balcony
• Elias Verde – janitor, speaks to the building in Spanish and Latin
• Franny Loop – organist, blind, but claims to see "auras" in the crowd
• Rick Salvo – projectionist, doesn’t talk, ever
• “Bub” – basement maintenance, no one knows his real name or where he sleeps

Regulars

• “Showtime Charlie” – old vaudevillian who refuses to leave, even in death
• Hazel Fry – critic for the Tribune, likes her horror live and screaming
• “Waltz” – sits in the back row every Thursday, talks to ghosts during intermission
• Reggie the Spool – sells odd film reels out of a trench coat in the lobby
• Lucía Salazar – sometimes uses the green room for rituals when no one’s booked
• Father Brennigan – claims to be “monitoring Veil leaks,” but buys a ticket every time

Notes

• Rumor says the fourth row, center aisle, never stays empty for long—even when unsold.
• The organ plays itself after midnight during the new moon. No one cleans it anymore.
• Backstage mirrors sometimes show different performances—or none at all.
• There’s a trapdoor in the orchestra pit that leads to a sealed sub-basement. Sealed, but not silent.
• A private loge is always reserved but never claimed. Its velvet is darker than the rest.
• An old program from 1931 lists a play that never ran. The cast and crew are still listed as “missing.”