The Problem of Horror in Theatre

It's a simple question, in two parts:

1.     Is it possible to engender genuine horror in an audience through a live stage experience?
2.     If so, how?

I have been kicking this around for at least the last two years, maybe longer. Finally I decided to toss some of the issues out to some of the smartest people I know, i.e. youse guys.

First. . .

Some not so simple questions

What's the point?

What do we get out of it, this horror experience so prevalent and so profitable in movies and books? Is it the adrenaline kick? Studies have shown that regular doses of adrenaline can have both positive and negative health effects. (m_turner* points out that one of the roles adrenaline plays is to enhance memory. This might provide a welcome side-benefit to the artistic experience, but I think it hardly accounts for the pervasiveness of the genre.) Certainly in the modern world-- occasional terrorist attacks and earthquakes notwithstanding-- we have fewer opportunities to cop our adrenaline fix than our forebears did swinging from branches or crouching in caves. Maybe we like being scared because it makes us feel more human – or rather, more animal. Then again, maybe we enjoy occasionally giving form to the inchoate fears commensurate with our modern existence. Maybe, in a nobler vein, the value of experiencing fear lies in conferring us some sympathy for those poor souls who, for whatever reasons, live their lives afraid. Or maybe there's a sort of psychic purge at work. And finally, maybe it's a combination of some or all of these factors, and perhaps many more.

It's nearly impossible to dispute that there is indeed something about the horror experience that that keeps us coming back for more; and thus, as a playwright, I feel like it's incumbent upon me to explore it further, to see if it is possible for me to mine this vein so artistically and, what's more, financially lucrative.

What drives horror?

This is a larger question than just, "what scares us?" I want to go one stratum deeper and ask: What is it that is inherent to our natures that makes us capable of getting scared in the first place? Is it death? Or the apprehension of it? Or is it the broader apprehension of universal loss-- the fact that everything changes, and mostly for the worse? Does isolation drive horror? Or does its more evil twin, alienation, more urgently push the pedal?

A little over a year ago, Cletus the Foetus* and I got into an on-going discussion about this very subject, and I believe he got at something very interesting indeed when he said:

Horror involves things beyond human comprehension, breaking down cherished notions about self-identity, memory, spatial relation, history and chronology, body, reference or representation, influence, reason – all the metaphysical categories according to which we situate our knowledge in the first place.

I am tempted to dub what CTF is talking about here something like "psychic distortion", but I balk just a bit. Is it quite the right term? In any case, I'd like to show how theatre is uniquely suited to get at some of these notions he talks about breaking down.

Why theatre?

After all, if other media like film and fiction do it so well, maybe theatre is out-gunned. The challenge of frightening audience members in a live environment is certainly more arduous and complex. Ask yourself: have you ever been truly frightened by something you have seen on stage? For that matter, have you ever even been to the theatre? (A question for another node, perhaps, but still somewhat relevant, in that it points at theatre's dwindling scope as a medium for the masses.)

Obviously fiction can wrap a reader so tightly up in a world of mostly their own imagining that well-written horror can easily work its suffocating magic; but of course, there's always the option of putting the book down as well. The great horror writers create in their readers that wonderful tearing tension between not wanting to turn the next page and not being able to stop themselves. It is worth noting, however, that fiction is a lonely art, written by one to be read by one. Theatre, conversely, is created collaboratively and consumed that way as well.

Film creates palpable realities, woven with special effects, compelling cinematography, and some of the best acting, directing and screenwriting talent gazillions of dollars can buy. Theatre just cannot compete, at least not on film's turf. But mind you, it is a common mistake to think that the stage is nothing more than cinema's poorer, older, four-dimensional cousin. That extra dimension makes a true world of difference; if only theatre artists can allow themselves to trust in its power.

“Psycho-social regression”

I am cocky enough to propose that theatre is capable of exploring types of horror that other art forms can't really touch. Carl Jung hints at this in Concerning Rebirth circa, 1940:

    ...You go to the theatre: glance meets glance, everybody observes everybody else, so that all those who are present are caught up in an invisible web of mutual unconscious relationship....

Mankind has always formed groups which made collective experiences of transformation—often of an ecstatic nature— possible. The regressive identification with lower and more primitive states of consciousness is invariably accompanied by a heightened sense of life.…The inevitable psychosocial regression within the group is partially counteracted by ritual, that is to say through a cult ceremony which makes the solemn performance of sacred events the centre of group activity and prevents the crowd from relapsing into unconscious instinctuality... The ritual makes it possible for him to have a comparatively individual experience even within the group and so remain more or less conscious. But if there is no relation to a centre which expresses the unconscious through its symbolism, the mass psyche inevitably becomes the hypnotic focus of fascination, drawing everyone under its spell. That is why masses are always breeding-grounds of psychic epidemics, the events in Germany being a classic example of this.

Of course, this leads to certain safety concerns unique to theatre that I will touch upon in another node.

I suspect, in the final analysis, we'll find that theatre is not outgunned by its cousin art forms, given that it possesses weapons in its arsenal and cards up its sleeve that only deeply experienced show people can begin to suspect; but I also believe only careful experimental evidence can truly prove otherwise. That is why I so very much want to create an evening of horror, ideally a collection of small pieces at first, to see what does and does not achieve the goal of terrifying a goodly portion of the audience. Horror, like laughter, is a verifiable, repeatable experimental result in the theatre.

Now . . .

How do we do it?

Suspension of Disbelief

A lot of lip service is given to the idea of the willing suspension of disbelief both in regards to horror and drama. Indeed, Cletus told me once that he wondered if it was possible to engender horror on stage without suspension of disbelief. I beg to differ. Frankly, I've always thought SOD had far less importance in the theatre than most believe, and judging from the works of my favorite playwrights: Shakespeare, Brecht, Wilder, I'd say they' would probably agree. Far from suspending disbelief, good theatre is about expanding belief, enriching and perhaps even exploding it.

On a pragmatic level, I would say SOD is hardly even an achievable, or for that matter legitimate, goal vis-à-vis modern audiences. Today's theatre-goer is far too sophisticated and hiply inured to every possible shock to blithely and willingly suspend their disbelief. Still, I would like to experiment with finding smaller points and/or zones of disbelief suspension. I propose it is possible to use the technique almost surgically, like a painter adding a small field of pointilism in an otherwise expressionistic canvas. I'd call this Tactical Suspension of Disbelief. (It is important to note, however, that within this area of exploration, it is utterly incumbent upon theatre artists to have a frank discussion of safety and liability issues that arise when a theatre starts messing with people's idea of what is really happening.  There is a fine and all too often broken line between disbelief suspension and hoax; and, while hoax may or may not be an effective form of expression, I remain unconvinced that this is the best method for true theatrical madness. Hoax locks people up more often than it frees them.)

Proximity

An alternative to SOD is something I call theatrical proximity. This is the notion that something which happens on stage, especially on a smaller fringe-scale stage, is inherently more effecting than the same event projected on a screen, regardless of whether the audience suspends their disbelief, for the very reason that theatre adds entirely new dimensions, not only spatially but psychologically. I remember a particular production of Julius Caesar I saw at the Public Theatre oh so many years ago. The cast boasted Al Pacino as Marc Antony and Martin Sheen as Brutus, and it sucked. But, boy, I tell ya: when those knives came out in Act III  my heart pounded in my chest all the same. The knowledge that violence-- even fake violence in a badly acted play-- is about to happen feet from your face is something that makes an end-run right around your cerebral cortex and leaps right into your reptile brain instead.

Bottom Line

I think theatre holds unique opportunities for engendering horror in an audience, but this cannot be achieved by trying to do what film and fiction do better. The trick will lie in finding what theatre does best: right now I am looking at psychosocial regression, tactical-- rather than strategic-- suspension of disbelief, heightened proximity and psychic distortion as my key targets of investigation; then using these techniques masterfully to achieve the wonderfully simple and experimentally verifiable goal of frightening the fuck out of people.

* * *

*This essay was written in 2004 and originally posted to the wild and woolly text-only writers’ site, Everything2.com.  I repost  it here essentially as it appeared, including the annoying formatting and the oh so overwrought style, which I like to think I’ve since modulated to just wrought. I intend to expand on my thoughts above with new essays and I am hoping some of you will kick in your perspectives so that I can include those too.

Comments

[Matthew Smucker]

The best most terrifying horror I've experienced on stage was "JERK" at On The Boards. (description here: http://www.seattlepi.com/ae/article/Troubling-Jerk-reveals-the-real-puppets-1290743.php) That show freaked me out and gave me nightmares. For real, no hyperbole. It was extremely disturbing in a way that fake blood and gore and movie style effects attempted (invariably unsatisfactorily) on stage will never be able to match. In fact that homicidal Panda bear puppet is making me tense (heart races, adrenaline pumps, must run away) just thinking about him 3 years later.

[Paul Mullin]

Thanks, Matthew.

That's awesome data to add to the collection. I hope others chime in with their successful horror in theatre stories.

Would I be right in assuming the way JERK induced horror for you would fall into the "psychic distortion" category?

[Matthew Sweeney00]

I don't know if this is relevant or not, but I can remember being told many times that violence on stage can't be too real or the audience will be distracted because they're worrying about the actors' safety. Pshhh. Personally, I've never seen it happen, but I have seen some half-assed violence in scripts where it was there for a purpose, and where its absence made the whole scene laughable.

[Paul Mullin]

Damn you, Matt Sweeney! You're going to wind up making me write a whole other essay on this subject, because I DO in fact feel like there are times when action on stage can make the audience worry about THEIR OWN safety. And then, all bets are off.

I remember I once watched a show in the Village in which at the end of it the actor pointed a gun at the audience and threatened them with it, waving it from person to person. At the time, I felt angry and irked, but did nothing. Now I'm pretty sure if it happened again, I would stand up and say, "If you don't stop pointing that gun at me and these other people I am going to come up there, take it away from you and slap your mouth."

One cowardly baseless threat deserves another.

[Tom Elliott]

Maybe this is what you mean by psychic distortion, but for theatre it seems to me you have to leverage the imagination of the audience - essentially leading them to scare themselves. Had to think about this a lot when directing Titus a couple years ago. The rape scene can either be laughable or horrifying, and I had to stage it ten feet away from the first row. Our solution was to rely on two flashlights for light, generally focused on Lavinia's face. The audience couldn't see everything that was happening to her, but they could see her reactions and hear it all. Same basic idea for cutting off Titus' hand - the sound of a Skilsaw and tight light on Titus' face. What the audience (especially a modern audience) can imagine is so much more frightening than what we can try to literally portray.

[Paul Mullin]

Tom, thanks for chiming in. Those are awesome examples. I'm sort of terrified just imagining them, based on your description.

And while "psychic distortion" is related, I think what you are talking about is something distinct and deserves its own term and its own exploration, perhaps yet ANOTHER essay. (I may have opened Pandora's box here.)

So what should we call it? "Auto-terrorizing audience collaboration". That's too wonky and long.

"Collaborative auto-response". Hmmmm not quite on the money.

Come one, folks. Help a brother out. What do we call the the technique Tom's describing?

Also, please offer any additional examples of this.

[Matthew Sweeney00]

Paul, I just want to be clear that my callousness was directed at actors, not innocent audience members.

[RaymondMcNeel]

Two caveats: (1) I can’t comment on the thrilling innovations currently happening in New York and London, especially with site-specific immersive theater, because my knowledge of them here in “flyover country” only comes from what I can read in the Times. (2) I regard theatrical violence and horror as two separate phenomena though they can be mutually inclusive. The Lieutenant of Inishmore (McDonagh) is one of the goriest, most violent plays ever produced, but not particularly “scary” in the traditional sense.

That said, a couple of thoughts…

Film vs theater

Fear is primal, our basest emotion and necessary for our survival. It’s also sensory. While we use our intellect and imagination to put 2 + 2 together to understand why a stimulus is horrifying, we’re dependent on good ol’ sight and sound to get to the “boo.”

As such, I would argue that simply by the nature of the mediums, film will always have an advantage in being able to frighten. At the risk of committing theatrical heresy, film is simply a more intimate form of storytelling. In watching a great film, we can be hypnotically transported inside a character’s reality and thus inside a character’s horror. However, even watching a great play we rarely lose awareness that we are watching actors “up there” or “down there” recreate or represent a reality with a backdrop and some hand props.

Utter isolation with no apparent means of escape from a threat is often at the heart of any story’s fright. On film, we believe we are trapped along with the character. On stage, we watch an actor as a character pretend to be in jeopardy, but we always know he could get a stagehand’s help or run up the aisle and out the door if the threat were really that serious.

Additionally, by controlling our field of vision, a film director can force us to see or hear something at the moment of his choosing…

•Rosemary’s Baby – Rosemary has managed to outrun her husband and doctor and barricade herself within the safety of her apartment…or so we think. Just over Rosemary’s shoulder, one of the elderly witches silently scampers across the doorway. A total throwaway in half a second, yet, at that instant, we know Rosemary is doomed.

•The Changeling – John sees a ball once owned by his dead daughter rolling past his doorway. Anxious to dispose of the bad memory, he drives out to a bridge and tosses the ball into the river. He returns home, shuts the door behind him, and the very same ball bounces down the stairs straight toward him.

•Paranormal Activity 3 – The camera is secured on the base of an oscillating fan that smoothly pans left to right and back again. It captures Julie in the kitchen when she hears a noise in the living room and follows her where she finds nothing. Without cutting, the camera follows her back into the kitchen where she finds every single object, including the furniture, missing…only to then come crashing down on the floor as if it had been floating against the ceiling.

No dialogue. Pure sight and sound. And only achievable on film.

I have seen an effective “jolt” once on stage…

The Alley Theatre produced The Pillowman (McDonagh) in their small theater surrounded by seats on all fours sides. In two of the corners were large elevated glass booths whose contents were hidden. When Katurian recounts how his parents tortured his brother with electricity, one of the glass booths was suddenly illuminated to reveal gruesomely gothic parents and their shaking son while electrical sparks blasted a deafening shower of sparks. (Note: the director forced us to see only the booth and it was close enough to be touched by half the audience.)

Types of Theatrical Scares

To paraphrase Stephen King, “Terror arises from a pervasive sense of disestablishment; that things are in the unmaking. It’s what the mind sees, the unpleasant speculation of what could be there. Horror actually shows us the thing we don’t want to see, but in the showing we are relieved that it wasn’t something worse. Revulsion just grosses us out.”

To extend this distinction to the theatrical world, “horror” would most likely be achieved on stage by a monologues, where storyteller/s allows our minds to imagine endless dreadful possibilities. The Woman in Black (Mallatratt), St. Nicholas (McPherson) and Jerk (Cooper) take such an approach.

Other plays go for "horror" -

“Boo!” or The Startle

•Voices in the Dark (Pielmeier) – Lil is fighting a bad guy when the lights go out and all is in darkness. She sweeps the beam to where the attacker lies, but he‘s gone. Suddenly, he leaps out from behind her. She grabs a gun and shoots him. She then suspects she’s not alone. She sweeps the light to reveal that the front door has been opened. She slams it shut and bolts it. She sweeps her light again, slowly up the stairs to the loft immediately above her to see the face of the real killer!

The “Spectacle”

•Quills (Wright) – During a brief bolt of lightning during a storm, we see the mutilated corpse of Madeleine hung suspended from the rafters and spinning wildly.

•Sweeney Todd (Sondheim) - Sweeney slices the throats of his victims and drops them down the chute to the bakery below.

The “Realization”

•Sleuth (Shaffer) – After a lighthearted romp of wicked banter and insults, we realize it’s all been a setup for Andrew to murder Milo.

•Boy Get Girl (Gilman) – Over the course of the play it is revealed how truly disturbed Theresa’s stalker really is and the lengths he will go to punish her for her rejection.

[Paul Mullin]

Raymond, I'll go ahead and remove your first three comments. And thank you for your thoughts!

[dcxx]

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