Brian Newell has been raising the undead inside Downtown Fullerton’s Maverick Theater for over 20 years. Back in 2005, he adapted George Romero’s 1968 B-movie, Night of the Living Dead, into a play, and is continuing the annual Halloween tradition today. I recently had the unique opportunity to enter the darkened theatre space and interview Brian about how his live adaptation of the zombie cult movie has been creeping out theatre aficionados for decades.

This year’s Maverick Theater production of Night of the Living Dead opens September 25th and runs until October 31, 2026. For those who are unfamiliar with the horror story, it essentially follows a group of stranded survivors who are forced to barricade themselves inside an isolated farmhouse while a horde of the cannibalistic undead gather outside. The Maverick’sproduction for Night of the Living Dead also involves a high-tension situation much like you would see in a lot of action and horror genre films, which gives Brian an excuse to underscore it with great uncanny themes.

As both a producer and a director of the production, Brian said, “Back in 2006, it was my second Halloween season in this space, and I came across the idea of Night of the Living Dead; I saw that some people had done it as plays because it’s public domain, and so I was like, ‘if it’s public domain, that means I can adapt it.’ And so that first year, that’s what I did…with no intention of bringing it back every year. But, as fate would have it, just before I opened, I got a phone call, and the lead actress from the original movie happened to be living here in Orange County. She called up and said, ‘Are you really doing my movie on stage?’”

He didn’t believe it at first, but it really was Judith O’Dea, the actress who played the role of Barbara in George Romero’s film. She told him that she had to be there on opening night, and so she came and took a cast picture with Brian and everyone in the production.

Brian said, “Afterward, she came over to me and goes, ‘Now you’re going to do this every year, right?’ And I was like, ‘Yes!’ and that’s what I’ve done ever since. So I took her question and made it reality. It has been a wonderful journey, all the fun times we’ve had putting this on for the audience and then [seeing] all the actors that have come through here.”

There have been almost a thousand actors who have played roles as zombies in Brian’s adaptation over the years. In that time, the Maverick Theater has held way more than 450 performances. For such a small space, Brian and his theater company have to do a lot of performances because of the demand. The show has sold out before, so his company has added more shows over time. He now has two casts that perform the show just to cover all those dates.

The cast size is close to thirty, making it one of the largest casts in the theater’s history. However, he doesn’t have much of a backstage crew; the performers tend to do double duty, playing both roles as zombies as well as working behind the scenes, such as running fog machines, moving machinery or handling more technical-based production roles. They’re always active one way or another.

“I’ve got to put movies on stage; that’s what I’ve got to do,” Brian told himself when he first started. He has always strived to be a filmmaker and has worked in small positions within the film industry, but never got the break that everyone’s waiting for. Instead of sitting around, he needed to be imaginative, so when a friend of his, who had a theatre called Stages here in Fullerton, asked him to be a resident sound designer, he jumped at the opportunity and helped his friend do sound design for different shows.

During that time, and dating all the way back to when he was a student at Troy High School, Brian always wanted to put movie scores to theatre scenes, underscoring them just like a film. He loved it because it came naturally to him and he had a vast library of scores. At Stages, he had an opportunity to adapt and direct a show, so he took on a western called The Magnificent Seven and adapted it. Brian chose it for the stage because of composer Elmer Bernstein’s traditional western score, and because he also thought the story had rich characters in it.

He said, “I took it on just to see what would happen and that was it. I was hooked…so over time, I did other shows at Stages, then eventually…ended up opening the Maverick with one of my best friends, Jim Book, who taught at Fullerton College for thirty years. He and I, and my wife [Heidi Newell], first opened the theater at the Block at Orange. We were there for a couple of years and then decided to have a permanent home here in Downtown Fullerton, where we grew up.”

Brian continued, “My whole concept of even owning a community theater was not to do all the traditional stuff that people see in theatre being offered everywhere…I wanted to do my idea of cinema on stage. That’s why Night of the Living Dead is such a great example of my type of theatre.”

There are a lot of actors and non-actors out there who have the strange desire to be a zombie on stage. Brian is thankful that many people have this eccentric wish. Putting contacts in, getting the zombie makeup on every night, making guttural sounds and maybe throwing out your voice is certainly a challenge that the actors on Night of the Living Dead have taken on and handled very professionally. There’s also the physically intense side to playing a zombie, which involves getting beat up and thrown to the ground (obviously with safety precautions taken by the theater’s staff). The majority of Brian’s performers who play zombies have never been actors before.

“What I get excited about is seeing this new blood come in, and I take them through a bunch of lifelike scenarios on how to prep yourself to be my kind of zombie, with my stage manager and assistant director,” said Brian. “My kind of zombie is ultimately the George Romero zombie, and so that’s what we did at our last auditions [this August], took them through the physical part of it, the movement part of it. I want them to focus their energy before, during or after an attack, and all those kinds of things play into [casting] it, and from there, we make our decision.”

Recalling memories of previous Night of the Living productions, Brian says that he has formed many relationships with his cast, to the point where some of them have become lifelong friends and many of them continue to work on the show, so it’s almost like a family reunion every autumn when they come together. He also really enjoys the excitement of bringing on new people to the production after auditioning, as well as his own relationship to the show, and how he interacts with the audience.

“I run every show. I’ve only missed three performances out of the twenty-one years we’ve been doing it…I sit up there in the booth, and I program the lights and the sound, play it, hit all the cues, and I get to watch the audience, get to watch them react to the moments I was able to create on stage, the thrills, the scares, the humor, and I think…it’s just a wonderful time of year to be doing a show like this. Audiences come in excited; they leave thrilled…so for me, that’s probably my favorite part of doing the show every year,” said Brian.

Located at 110 E. Walnut Avenue, Unit B, the Maverick Theater performs Night of the Living Dead at 8pm on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays; 7pm & 9pm on Saturdays; and 7pm on Sundays from September 25 to Halloween (October 31, 2026). Tickets cost $39. Further information is available on the Maverick Theater website at https://mavericktheatre.com/nold-2026/.