Street Scene

Posted December 20, 2007 by Jennifer Melick

Next time you’re visiting Lower Manhattan, don’t be surprised if you encounter this shady-looking New Jerseyan lurking on a street corner.

For the past two years, Joe Luongo, a 27-year-old actor and Hopatcong native, has been part of the cast of an interactive show called Accomplice. Here’s how it works: You buy tickets on the show’s website. All locations and plot are kept secret until a telephone call the day before the performance tells you where to arrive at “curtain time.” The action is a hybrid of game and scavenger hunt in which the “audience” finds clues and tours the city, encountering a cast of criminal-minded yet hilarious characters stationed at posts along the way.

“There’s a script,” Luongo says, “but it’s really a skeleton.”

Luongo remembers his 2005 audition for show co-creator Tom Salomon as an exercise in “making things up.” The director saw that Luongo could readily answer questions coming out of left field and “make it funny at the same time.”

The craziest thing about the show, he says, are the curveballs the city throws his way. One time someone’s car broke down and Luongo and his audience had to help push it down the block to a nearby garage (the audience thought it was part of the show); on another day, a painter on the roof of a nearby church accidentally got locked out and kept throwing down pebbles in a desperate attempt to signal for help.

What does he like best about the show? “It doesn’t take itself too seriously, which I think a lot of theater in New York does.”

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