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Sep. 26th, 2009
A few years ago, a movie hit the theatres that featured a fabulously gothic Victorian house.
( It looked rather like this. )
And after I saw it, I was on the phone with Mookie so we could sniffle about how homesick we were. Because when your family home is stored in trailers, it's really hard to go home again.
Grisly Gothic Gables. The haunt that made me a haunter, created and owned by the man I call my haunt dad and mean it with all my heart.
It was - it is - a theatrical old-world show. No chainsaws, no gore, not much in the way of sophisticated machinery, we were the Munsters more than the Addams family and never quite got past operating on a truly skeletal skeleton crew, which made the rather last-minute load-ins and load-outs of the show quite a challenge. (But really, unless you've had to help unload a trailer or two full of framed plywood and props, and then spend the next few weeks shuffling piles of panels around a storefront trying to make room to build the show, you haven't truly had the haunter's experience.)
When I'm asked why I love working in haunted houses so much, I generally reply, "Because it's pretty!" And it is.
( home home home! )
You just can't tell me that's not beautiful.
The alchemy that took a shy girl and turned her into a haunter is of course more complicated than, "Because it's pretty!" Take the acceptance of a brilliant creative man, toss in some, "Could you please help us manage the actors?", shove that girl into a costume and then in front of a news crew, and believe her when she says, "I know the storyline..I think I could guide tours through the show." Voila! You have the beginnings of a spooky little me.
(Side note: Part of me suspects that the best way to deal with a haunt family is to have two houses during September and October. Put the haunters into one house, give them a housekeeping staff to make sure they're eating reasonably well and getting their laundry done, crank up the soundtrack to The Nightmare before Christmas, and lock the door until November 1st. The other house is where all their assorted sweeties live, supporting each other through their Halloween widowdom, until the season's over.)
I had hoped - many of us had hoped - that we'd be seeing the manse built again this year to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the naming of the show. (If you clicked on that link to the Grisly website, you'll find a lot of history about the show, and about the owner, written by yours truly, so I'm holding back quite a bit here.) And as we started to reconnect, I thought a lot about what Loquacious Grisly used to say about us all - that we could go for a year without talking but as soon as the season started to kick in, we would snap back into a team, a family. Even though the show has been dark for several years, he's still right. We're still family. Distance and life and any number of complications can't erase that. And when I look at shows that use fear of being fired to control the core cast, I believe with all my heart that they're doing it wrong.
Grisly Gothic Gables drove me to exhaustion, broke my foot, made me literally fear for my life, challenged and encouraged and formed me in some incredibly powerful ways. I've played a lot of roles and loved it - truly, I've worked for some brilliant people and some lovely shows - but in my heart I'm still a Grisly first. We may not have a home, but we're family. And I'm so proud, and lucky, to be able to say that.
( It looked rather like this. )
And after I saw it, I was on the phone with Mookie so we could sniffle about how homesick we were. Because when your family home is stored in trailers, it's really hard to go home again.
Grisly Gothic Gables. The haunt that made me a haunter, created and owned by the man I call my haunt dad and mean it with all my heart.
It was - it is - a theatrical old-world show. No chainsaws, no gore, not much in the way of sophisticated machinery, we were the Munsters more than the Addams family and never quite got past operating on a truly skeletal skeleton crew, which made the rather last-minute load-ins and load-outs of the show quite a challenge. (But really, unless you've had to help unload a trailer or two full of framed plywood and props, and then spend the next few weeks shuffling piles of panels around a storefront trying to make room to build the show, you haven't truly had the haunter's experience.)
When I'm asked why I love working in haunted houses so much, I generally reply, "Because it's pretty!" And it is.
( home home home! )
You just can't tell me that's not beautiful.
The alchemy that took a shy girl and turned her into a haunter is of course more complicated than, "Because it's pretty!" Take the acceptance of a brilliant creative man, toss in some, "Could you please help us manage the actors?", shove that girl into a costume and then in front of a news crew, and believe her when she says, "I know the storyline..I think I could guide tours through the show." Voila! You have the beginnings of a spooky little me.
(Side note: Part of me suspects that the best way to deal with a haunt family is to have two houses during September and October. Put the haunters into one house, give them a housekeeping staff to make sure they're eating reasonably well and getting their laundry done, crank up the soundtrack to The Nightmare before Christmas, and lock the door until November 1st. The other house is where all their assorted sweeties live, supporting each other through their Halloween widowdom, until the season's over.)
I had hoped - many of us had hoped - that we'd be seeing the manse built again this year to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the naming of the show. (If you clicked on that link to the Grisly website, you'll find a lot of history about the show, and about the owner, written by yours truly, so I'm holding back quite a bit here.) And as we started to reconnect, I thought a lot about what Loquacious Grisly used to say about us all - that we could go for a year without talking but as soon as the season started to kick in, we would snap back into a team, a family. Even though the show has been dark for several years, he's still right. We're still family. Distance and life and any number of complications can't erase that. And when I look at shows that use fear of being fired to control the core cast, I believe with all my heart that they're doing it wrong.
Grisly Gothic Gables drove me to exhaustion, broke my foot, made me literally fear for my life, challenged and encouraged and formed me in some incredibly powerful ways. I've played a lot of roles and loved it - truly, I've worked for some brilliant people and some lovely shows - but in my heart I'm still a Grisly first. We may not have a home, but we're family. And I'm so proud, and lucky, to be able to say that.
