Halloween Plays

Similar to the Christmas season, October tends to be a big marketing time for many theaters, who annually produce scary plays. Also similar to the Christmas time, many people venture to see plays who might not otherwise go.

While adaptations of classics, such as Dracula and Frankenstein abound (including both straight versions and farcical ones), there is still a need for more good scripts. Many of the scripts available today are either too short for a full evening's entertaining, or simply too silly to be done.

The main points of a Halloween play are to scare, frighten, and surprise an audience. Some humor can certainly be included, but unless the play is meant as a spoof, too much humor can distract from the suspenseful nature.

Working in theater has its advantages and disadvantages when compared to movies or television. In screenplays, special effects play a large role in the horror factor for the audiences. Seeing blood and body parts in graphic detail has been a staple of movies for the past few decades, and with computer technology, extreme visuals are now available.

Unless blessed with a huge production budget, most theaters will not be able to have much in the way of special effects. Lighting, smoke machines, and eerie music are the usual tools available.

Therefore, in theater, where intimacy with the actors is key, it is the horrific characters that can work to put the audience on edge. Plays such as The Man by Mel Dinelli or Wait Until Dark by Frederick Knott, where the characters are truly creepy, can bring about the unease required to satisfy a scare-bound audience.

There is an abundance of material that can be freely adapted from the 19th century, beyond Bram Stoker and Mary Shelly. Works by Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Edgar Allan Poe provide plenty of opportunity to create works of "stage fright." The days of gothic horror may seem to be out of date with today's sophisticated audiences (at least by movie standards), but the essence of fear factors still remain with us. Done well, good scary plays can still cause us to gasp and shake.

If one is blatantly going for humor, spoofs and satires are also welcome by many production companies, including takeoffs of vampires and monsters, murder mysteries, and witchcraft and spells. Original works are also eagerly sought by acting companies, and today's headlines provide an abundance of frightening material. A set of one-acts can also be done, perhaps combining adaptations of short stories or original tales.

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