Friends of mine at the only pay-what-you-will theatre company in Philadelphia, Thespionage, are working on a fun collection of plays whose genre can be described only as "comedic horror." They are calling it Are You Afraid of the Bar. Think Are You Afraid of the Dark with less woods, fires, and awkward '90s stereotypes and replace it all with crude humor, hip twentysomethings, and booze.
For Are You Afraid of the Bar, I chose to write a play heavily inspired by Robert Wise's 1963 film The Haunting. (Which itself is inspired by Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House.) So, in fairness, I don't have to try very difficult to make this funny. The '60s have taken care of the humor for me. If you don't believe me, I recommend you watch this movie, which has placed first on Martin Scorsese's list of 11 scariest horror movies of all time. See how far we've come.
If I do my job well, the play, which I'm currently calling Haunted, will do for The Haunting what Durang's For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls did for The Glass Menagerie.
For Are You Afraid of the Bar, I chose to write a play heavily inspired by Robert Wise's 1963 film The Haunting. (Which itself is inspired by Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House.) So, in fairness, I don't have to try very difficult to make this funny. The '60s have taken care of the humor for me. If you don't believe me, I recommend you watch this movie, which has placed first on Martin Scorsese's list of 11 scariest horror movies of all time. See how far we've come.
If I do my job well, the play, which I'm currently calling Haunted, will do for The Haunting what Durang's For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls did for The Glass Menagerie.