Breaking Character: Grab your ghouls and ghosts, and gear up for a night of horror!
The cold fall weather has us craving to curl up with a good read, whether it be a classic horror tale or a ghoulish comedy. Just make sure you leave your lights on and glance under your bed before you go to sleep. These ten goosebumps inducing shows are sure to keep you occupied in between trick-or-treaters.
6 comments:
All of these shows seem very interesting to both perform and see. The synopsis for Veronica’s Room: “Susan and Larry find themselves as guests enticed to the Brabissant mansion by its dissolute caretakers. Struck by Susan’s strong resemblance to Veronica Brabissant, long- dead daughter of the family, the caretakers convince her to impersonate Veronica briefly to solace the only living Brabissant, her addled sister.” I remember reading about a film with a similar plot, and I can’t remember if it’s a Hitchcock or not, but the plot revolves around a young wife who realizes she looks like her husband’s ex wife who has passed away. It’s something like that, I’ll have to find out what movie that is so I don’t drive myself crazy. These shows look interesting, I’d like to see the Edgar Allen Poe show, whether in its entirety or the small pieces, either way Poe’s work lends itself well to theatricality.
when thinking about horror i always wish there where more truly terrifying pieces in theater. though woman in black offered an interesting and scary experience not many followed in the wake. this is a quite interesting list it offers both the classics but also some titles i have never heard of before. hopefully this will quench my thirst for the horrific on stage.
How cool! Earlier this week I was trying to think of scary shows and I could only really remember Sweeney Todd, if that even counts. I know this isn’t exactly what this article is about but I think that some of these spooky shows could be another thing that gets my generation back in theatre audiences and not movie theaters. Yes horror was definitely more of a movie thing in the past, because of jump scares and editing and what not. But now with the rise of haunted houses and group escape rooms where you have to figure out how to get out of a spooky themed ‘locked’ room with your friends, I think it is clear that we are now craving that more in real life fear. Theatre can really take advantage with that because we always connect more with people than with actors on a screen. Bring on the spooks.
It's interesting how when someone asks you for horror movie titles everyone can instantly rattle off ten, but horror theater is such a smaller genre. Additionally, none of these shows really seem to connect to the other in my head. They're all scary or have traditional horror elements, but vary dramatically in how they present those ideas to the audience-- whereas, in horror movies, many of them have very similar themes. I think it's weird that there are so many more famous horror movies than horror plays, because I think the intimate live nature of theater lends itself to horror beautifully. After all, when you're watching someone in the same room as you be truly terrified for their life, it becomes a much more visceral experience for an audience member. It would be sort of like a haunted house, but instead of you being the one in pretend danger it would be characters in front of you that you connect to. I guess that would make it a third-person view of a haunted house, which in itself has so many creepy potential applications.
Its no wonder spooky shows make money with the holidays, just like the Nutcracker and Christmas holidays mean money. A lot of the titles came from scripts that were originally books. "And Then There Were None" and "Frankenstein" to name a few. Not included on the list is the Harry Potter franchise, books into movies and even a play now. It makes me wonder if we will start turning movies into play too. Following the theme of popular scary scary series turning into halloween cash cows makes me wonder if big hits like American Horror Story will be a show in the distant future. Heck everything even the Addam's Family has been turned into a performance, and for better or worse I wonder whats next.
Of course shows about holidays or that pertain to the similar themes or happen around the time will grasp the opportunity of revival during holiday seasons. And quietly frankly, theatre companies know that audiences tend to eat it up when shows like Frankenstein is performing during Halloween. Sometimes, in order to jump on this holiday bandwagon, they may even seek to bring some shows that are not mainly about the festival but contain holiday elements. These sort of attempts often end up being cheesy. Like in China, spring festival is as important as Christmas in America and there are tons of movies and plays made just for the holiday with characters wearing red and fireworks blossoming in the sky but really have zero to do with the holiday itself.
I think these top ten spooky plays are quite interesting and it seems to be quite genius if some theatre companies plan ahead to bring some of them onstage.
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