Halloween Haunts: Halloween in a Theatre
Halloween Haunts: Halloween in a Theatre
By Kevin Wetmore
There is a running joke in the theatre, often expressed on a t-shirt, stating, “I can’t – I have rehearsal.” This has felt like a truism for much of my professional life. I am often too busy doing theatre to do much else, including seeing other theatre.
Don’t weep for me or my people, however, because we are, like the Halloween People, able to keep the Halloween spirit all year round. Think about it: I get to put on costumes regularly. I play dress up. I play, period. One of the great tragedies of growing up is that there comes a time when you’re supposed to stop trick r treating and stop having child-like fun at Halloween. Sure, teens and adults now put on costumes and go to parties (if I understand what I have seen in Spirit Halloween stores, men are supposed to wear something ironic and women are supposed to be the “sexy” version of something – “Sexy Scooby Doo,” “Sexy Sam-from-Trick-r-Treat,” “Sexy Corona Virus,” etc. I don’t get it, but it’s a million-dollar industry, so who am I to judge?) But I get paid to play dress-up year round.
But just like “I can’t – I have rehearsal,” I can’t do Halloween stuff because I am busy doing Halloween stuff in a theatre. As it should be.
There is a long history of Halloween and plays. Beginning with the advent of community-organized Halloweens, there has been a popular tradition of Halloween plays, pageants, pantomimes and other performances. Schools frequently featured Halloween monologues, recited by children in costume and in character, telling scary stories, and recitations, which are solo rhyming performances (popular in the 1920s and 1930s). Plays, monologues, skits and recitations were seen as ways to channel creativity (and children’s energy) to activities that would not be destructive or malicious (always a fear at Halloween). More recently, a number of plays have been written to be performed by and for students as young as first grade and as old as high school that are purposely set on Halloween.
But Halloween appeared on stage long before American children performed on it. James Hogg’s 1817 play All-Hallow-Eve tells the tale of a group of country women who go to have their fortunes told on the eponymous night, and one of them finds herself possibly marrying the devil. The holiday made appearances in various plays throughout the nineteenth century, and the Celtic revival of the early twentieth brought about a few plays celebrating the Celtic origins of Halloween, most notably William Sharp’s The Immortal Hour (1911)
More contemporary fare has come about in recent decades. As horror theatre has grown, Halloween has become a time to get audiences in the doors (the non-Halloween People still like to play at being us in October – we do it year ‘round). Back in 1991, when I was living in the United Kingdom, I spent Halloween in a theatre watching a live production of The Rocky Horror Show (the stage musical that inspired the film). Five years later in 1996, I played Dr. Frank-n-furter in a production of The Rocky Horror Show in Pittsburgh which had two performances on Halloween (thus requiring me to spend Halloween in a theatre once again). Eleven years after that, I directed The Rocky Horror Show at my university, again with shows at eight and midnight performances – another Halloween in a theatre.
For the past twelve years I have spent a significant part of October in a theatre rehearsing the annual Haunted Library event that I write and direct. It then goes to our university library for a site-specific performance (this year: The Haunting of Hannon XII: Secret, Dark, and Midnight Things [an evening of Shakespeare-inspired horror scenes]). I get a Halloween now, however, as we perform in the weeks before Halloween, leaving the last week open for me to trick-r-treat again (the joy of having children means you have an excuse to put on a costume and walk around with them!)
There are also plays set on Halloween, and I want to single out one that I teach every year in my horror theatre class: 70 Scenes of Halloween by Jeffrey M. Jones. I recommend it to all horror fans. If you cannot see a production, read the script. It is a fascinating play. Set on Halloween night, in which Jeff and Joan, a married couple, plan to give out candy, the title is literal. The play has seventy scenes. It is non=linear. Scenes contradict each other. A witch and The Beast show up (played by the wife and the husband, respectively, in masks and costumes). The whole mess is chaotic, and scary, and hilarious and poignant. Because the play actually literalizes the inner demons of the characters, brings to the fore their hidden resentments, their deepest desires, the fears they won’t even admit to themselves they have. Their marriage is failing, falling apart, and amidst the domesticity of handing out candy to trick-r-treaters while watching an old horror movie on Halloween the play demonstrates how sometimes we turn to playful fears and make-believe monsters, because reality is so much more terrifying.
I don’t know how many Halloweens I have left (one of my great fears), but I do know more of them will be spent in theatres. But the nice thing is, some of the times I spend in theatres will also be Halloween, even if it is March, or July, or any other time of year. Because the spirit of Halloween lives on when we play dress up in the dark. Which, as noted above, is my job.
Happy Halloween y’all.
Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr. is a six-time Bram Stoker Award nominee, the co-chair of HWA’s Los Angeles chapter, and the author or editor of over thirty books, including Eaters of the Dead, Devil’s Advocates: The Conjuring, The Streaming of Hill House, and The Many Lives of the Purge. He is also the writer/director of The Haunting of Hannon, an annual, immersive, site-specific, multiple, simultaneously staged themed haunted house.
Trailer for this year’s Haunting of Hannon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTNJTsOQ9Fs
70 Scenes of Halloween at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Seventy-Scenes-Halloween-Jeffrey-Jones/dp/0881452734/ref=sr_1_1
