horror on stage
As I mentioned in the last post, we got to see a horror play based in the Paranormal Activity franchise specifically designed to scare audiences out at Chicago Shakespeare. I think of this differently than other kinds of plays where the overall atmosphere is creepy or gothic. Sam Shepard's work overall for instance. Or play adaptations of things like Dracula or Frankenstein. Or plays with more macabre subject matter like "The Drowning Women" that we saw earlier this year. This play, though the clever use of magic tricks, effects, lighting, and sound was designed more with sudden scares and general foreboding embedded in its architecture.
The most interesting thing I experienced while watching it was a difficulty in knowing where to look. Or more, specifically where to look. With a camera in a film, you are guided along, though some films, like the first Insidious or series like The Haunting of Hill House, know how to plant things in the scenes in the background or in passing that the audience is meant to notice. The latter is famous for its random ghosts lingering in the backgrounds of shots. In this cage, onstage was a towering two-story structure that took up the entire stage, connected by a set of stairs. It weirdly reminded me of a slightly more horrific version of the house in Taylor Swift's "Lover" video.
Because we could see every room at the same time, I was struggling with where to look. During scenes downstairs between the afflicted couple, my eyes kept wandering to the darkened upstairs hall. The door to the only room completely off stage. The bathroom seemingly lit from outside by a nonexistent window. The occasional sweep of car lights offstage that lit the rooms and made eerie shadows. While I loved the effect, watching the play felt...well..exhausting from an anxiety standpoint. I found my eyes darting for any sign of strangeness or ghosts. I realized how much we take a certain safety in point-of-view. Everywhere, but especially in the horror genre. To be led by hands or eyes to what the creators want to show us. Or, apply the same principal to books and point-of-view.
Over the past week, I've been musing occasionally how this relates to poems, specifically to horror poetry. I write my more horror-driven projects with a similar narrative structure to all my work-fragment and multi-tonal with many p-o-vs. Though I imagine there is still guidance, intentional or unintentional when it comes to where we are supposed to be focusing at any given moment. The strings that pull your attention from one thing to the next.
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