Author: Joshua Malone

Throughout the ages, horror and theatre have possessed a relationship unlike any other genre to grace the stage. Reaching as far back as the Greeks, tales of murder and the macabre have captivated audiences. Many of the most famous and well-known plays historically contain scenes of graphic violence, dismemberment, and death. As time passed, these scenes and plays grew even darker and more graphic. While there have been ebb and flows of horror’s history on stage, it has always returned more vicious than ever. Violent acts once only implied were now demanded by the public to be seen; audiences now chose stories of madmen and murderers, over ghosts and gods. There are more types of horror productions now than at any other time in the history of theatre, and this growing trend does not seem to be weaning at all. How did we get to this new age of horror theatre? What can it tell us about the future of horror as a theatrical art form? Beginnings. Horror is a genre engraved into our species. We desire stories that shock and thrill us; tales that captivate the dark recesses of our mind, and the characters that haunt our dreams. It only makes sense that early theatre clung to horror and developed plays that possessed many macabre elements. Oftentimes these elements were used to teach moral lessons of some kind. Early Greek plays presented characters that broke decorum and taboos of the time, upsetting the gods. Thus the characters had to be punished, sometimes in horrific ways. Oedipus was forced to gouge out his own eyes as consequence for murdering his father and sleeping with his own mother. Medea slaughtered her own children. Greek theatre, as researchers have discovered, often had very violent endings. In fact some believe that certain shows were so violent that they caused women to miscarry. The Medieval period saw the fall of theater and then the subsequent rise of “morality plays,” short productions produced by the church to help tell lessons or sermons. Almost all of these plays ended with a “Hell Mouth,” essentially a portrayal of what would happen to the poor souls if they did not heed the lessons of the morality plays. Modern day Christian groups have made their own spin on this by creating the popularized “Hell Houses” where they take individuals through a typical haunted house scenario while demonstrating how sinful acts affect their lives and the consequences they face if they do not change their ways. With Shakespeare, the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, theatre started reverting back to stories of murder and the paranormal. In the play Macbeth, a series of events are foretold by witch sisters who use magic, Banquoa’s ghost is portrayed, and there are scenes of implied violence. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth also appear on stage at various points with their hands caked in blood. These are all horror elements that remain constant throughout history. It wasn’t until Andre Antoine created the idea of the in the 1880’s that horror really started to develop its own culture and genre of theatre. People’s interest (and subsequent concern) in the content was at a peek between the rise of Jack the Ripper as well as the publications of penny dreadfuls. Antoine followed the naturalist idea that theatre was to be as real as possible or it should be “nothing at all” (Gordon 11). He developed many short plays at the time revolving around the seedy underground Paris and extremely violent situations acted out on stage. These “rosse” plays quickly became all about shock value and that is where our real story picks up. Guignol Nearly ten years after Theatre Libre took rise, Oscar Metenier, co-founder of Libre, opened up the Grand Guignol theatre in 1897, during the height of the naturalist movement. The name guignol comes from the French word for puppet. Grand, as it alludes to, simply refers to the large scale. Theatrical puppet shows at the time were meant for children, and often depicted violent actions between the characters. The new Grand Guignol theatre was going to be a puppet show, but for adults. Everything, including the violence, would be on a much grander scale. The entrance to the theatre would be through a brick alleyway. The tone of the evening would already be set for the patrons as they made the journey towards the theatre doors. Inside, the large angels of the religious architecture became hollow spirits staring down at viewers… judging the souls of the visitors as they watched the events on stage take place. The actual stage space itself was only 23 feet by 23 feet (around 7 x 7 meters). The intimate and tight setting allowed for patrons to be fully submersed in the storytelling. The man behind the scenes of the Grand Guignol was Paul Ratineau. He was in charge of helping create many of the practical effects that occurred on stage, as well as the lighting, both key elements for every play produced by the theatre. How did Ratineau light the stage? Guignol theatre deals with a lot of concealed action, as well as a tense and dark tone (since they are mostly horror plays after all). The various acts of horror, be it a slit throat or a gouged eye, had to be concealed from the public. Many times those actions could be hidden within the blocking of actors, but lighting helped a great amount as well. Shadows and a dimly lit set helped hide the action taking place, but these also had a second purpose: setting the mood. Dark areas are mysterious and foreboding. The darker the set the harder it was to see who or where the evil was, thus building the tension within the audience. This trick is still used in horror theatre and films today as well as haunted houses. In the Middle Ages theatre artists used the body parts of animals in stage plays requiring mutilations or acts of violence (Gordon 4). This carried over onto the Grand Guignol stage where it was not abnormal to see a cow eye or a bit of pig intestine on stage. These elements mixed with specialized props, as well as the different kinds of blood created the illusion of violence on stage. Seven to nine different kinds of blood were made and used by different directors of the Grand Guignol at any given time (Young). Each type of blood would be used for the different kinds of wounds inflicted and would range in viscosity and shades of red depending on the location and age of the wound. When staging the acts of violence, directors took into account the blocking of the actors. Directors would place the actors purposefully in front of the action on stage so as to hide a gag that would require some sleight of hand (such as the gouging of an eye in Crime in the Madhouse). If they had a prop weapon that could make it seem as though it was cutting into real flesh they would openly show it to the audience so that each patron could see in plain view what was going on. As time went on in the Grand Guignol, audiences would expect to see more of the action taking place on stage rather than leaving it to the imagination. André de Lorde (or as he was also known, “Le Prince de la Terreur”), was the primary playwright for the Grand Guignol (Hands, Wilson 13). It is assumed that in his tenure he wrote nearly a hundred plays for the theatre, all mainly horror plays. When researchers look back into Guignol theatre, it is de Lorde’s work that they see most often. Grand Guignol, being the first theatre of its kind, offered a lot of opportunities for de Lorde and other playwrights to see work produced. The only catch was that it had to be horrific enough! Many of these plays, due to the nature of the material, came under harsh criticism. Yet the public flocked to this back alley theatre every show night to see the macabre take place on stage. In the early 1900’s, the uprising of film started competing with the world of theatre arts. Grand Guignol especially, felt the pressure of the big screen. Both the Grand Guignol and film were trying to produce very naturalistic plays for people to see. Film was capturing and replicating real life or at least it seemed to be. There was no asides, or cut away moment that shielded the violence in horror films. It was all edited together nicely. In order to compensate, the Grand Guignol started to produce more uber violent plays, and as previously mentioned, this led to safety issues both physically and mentally for actors. Even with these new effects on stage, attendance rates were slowly declining for the once infamous theatre. When World War II occurred people were learning just how evil the human race could really be. The horror inflicted during the war by the Nazi rank is considered the main reason for closing of the Grand Guignol. Charles Nonon, the director of the theatre at the time, is quoted as saying that Grand Guignol could “never equal Buchenwald.” The Grand Guignol Theatre closed its doors in 1962. Today, the International Visual Theatre--a theatre company devoted to producing plays in sign language--owns and produces plays on a stage that was once caked in blood. Evolution. Soon after the closing of the Grand Guignol there was an uprising of a new kind of horror performance: haunted houses. The actual beginnings of what we call a “haunted house” or a “haunted attraction” are rather vague. Rooms and games designed to scare people during the Autumn months have been around for centuries, almost as long as horror has been in the theatre itself. An example of this can be found in the popular television series, American Horror Story: Coven. One episode of the horror series has a flashback to the 1800’s, in which a character named Madam LaLaurie had a ‘Chamber of Horrors’ where she used different body parts as props to scare patrons of her Halloween party. There are also funhouses and the like that have been in fairs and carnivals for a long time as well. But the actual beginnings of the traditional haunted house seemed to start in the mid 1900’s when groups of people began to create haunted houses for fundraising opportunities during the...