Scream Come True! Travis A. Knight Went From Paranormal Activity Associate Director to Making His Broadway Debut

After two decades as a working actor, Travis A. Knight is making his Broadway debut—in a haunted house. Knight stars as James in Paranormal Activity at the August Wilson Theatre, after first joining the horror play as associate director. He spoke with Broadway.com Editor-in-Chief Paul Wontorek about his unexpected path to the role, his Chicago theater roots and the excitement of hearing Broadway audiences scream eight times a week.

The thrills of Paranormal Activity aren’t just reserved for the audience. “It's really some of the most fun I've ever had on stage,” Knight says. “These audiences have been electric, they've been vocal, they've been in it.” He hears everything from screams and nervous laughter to audience members actively warning him about what might be lurking nearby. “There was somebody last night in the first couple of rows that was like, ‘No, Jimmy, no, Jimmy,’” he says. “I heard somebody apologize to the person next to them after they screamed, which was really fun.”

Knight’s journey to Paranormal Activity began long before he stepped into James’ shoes. He and playwright Levi Holloway are both members of Chicago’s A Red Orchid Theatre, and Knight previously appeared in Holloway’s horror play Grey House. When Holloway invited him to join Paranormal Activity as associate director, taking over a leading role was nowhere on Knight’s radar. Instead, he was preparing to help preserve the production for future incarnations. “Right before I stepped in, I was in talks about potentially restaging it in other parts of the world or any other time that the show might pop up in the future,” he says. Then, suddenly, Knight was learning the role himself.

The turnaround from associate director to leading man was remarkably fast. “I had three weeks from the moment I found out that I was going to step in to the first rehearsal,” he says. “When we got to D.C., from first rehearsal to first preview was seven days. The third time I ever ran the show was our opening in Washington, D.C. There's a lot of white knuckling, but we did it.”

Even with the production’s intricate stagecraft, Knight managed to avoid any supernatural—or technical—disasters. “I screwed up no effects,” he recalls. “It's all very precise,” he says. “I forgot to turn on and off light switches sometimes, but you know, it's a haunted house. So those things just turn on and off.”

Knight may be new to Broadway, but he is far from a newcomer to the stage. After studying acting at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, he built a career across Milwaukee and Chicago, including five seasons at Wisconsin’s American Players Theatre. “I've been at this now for two decades,” he says. “So that's where it all started, the Midwest.”

Arriving on Broadway this far into an established career feels to Knight like a new introduction. “Maybe like a reboot,” he says. “This is a long time coming in my opinion.” Though he remains proud of his Chicago roots, Broadway always held a particular allure. “When you think about being a young actor and you think about acting and your career, New York City is sort of like the place you think of. Broadway is the place you think of. So to be here now and to be introduced to New York audiences in such a way like Paranormal Activity, it's a dream come true.”

Now that he’s on Broadway, Knight gets to experience that dream through the nightly reactions of an audience that has no idea what’s coming. “It's a blast doing this show,” he says. “I love coming to work. It's like one of those things where I'm almost envious. I wish I could watch this play for the first time again.” That first-time experience is one Knight is careful not to spoil for anyone else. So when curious theatergoers ask what Paranormal Activity is actually about, he keeps his description deliberately vague: “I say it's a story about a couple who move from Chicago to London and wild things start happening. That's it.”

Those wild things ultimately bring the performers and the audience together for an unusually communal Broadway experience. “It's a fun experience to sit up there and feel 1,300 people all sort of lean in and breathe at the same time,” Knight says. “It's like you just know that we're all about to go on this ride together and there's going to be a lot of highs and there's going to be some lows. It's a good time.”

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