With the month of October sealing to a close, the Wakefield Theatre Company is working hard to ensure the annual student-led haunted house carries on its tradition of being a spooktacular event for audiences to experience. The haunted house will be open and running during both PACK times on Oct. 24 and 25, and from 6-8 p.m. on Oct. 25 and 26 with an admission fee of $5 for students and families.
The haunted house is always produced and directed by the president-elect of Wakefield’s International Thespian Society troupe. Junior Avery Brasch is this year’s elect and is in charge of the whole project from initial ideas to execution. Brasch got started on the production with the help of her team as soon as she could in order to successfully establish it.
“First I was thinking about themes, then fleshing out my favorites and choosing one,” Brasch said. “I had Josey Geolas help me create characters and a story; she wrote the script and I created the layout, floor plans, etc. I directed rehearsals and [also] instructed everyone on building the set.”
This year’s haunted house theme is the Evil Scientist’s Laboratory and includes characters such as the doctor, researcher, mortician, creature and many others. Senior Jake Eisenberg is one of the guides for the haunted house as well as a previous director, enriching him with further experience and thoughts on the matter.
“This year, the theme is very creative and not something you see as often,” Eisenberg said. “[Themes such as] circus and haunted mansion are good themes, but are [themes] that you’ve seen before, but evil lab is not seen as often and has a lot of spaces to work with.”
To make this year’s haunted house stand out, Brasch worked with a goal to change up repetitive scenes from previous years to make the walk-through more suspenseful and surprising for students and families.
“There was a lot of bringing something new to the table that hasn’t been seen before for this haunted house,” Eisenberg said. “Avery and her team have been working on making sure that they get a lot of visual effects, lighting effects and things seen in more professional haunted houses that haven’t always been utilized as well in previous years.”
Acting in the haunted house can be quite different compared to acting in typical stage productions as it flips the switch on the behavior of certain characters. Caden Olson is a junior who plays the role of the doctor; he elaborates more on the topic.
“Usually, you’re using emotions in your characters that aren’t in the plays or anything because it’s not usually scary for the plays, but in the haunted house you get to [make the characters] be loud and scary which is fun and different,” Olson said.
Learning to adequately portray the role of the character also stands true for senior Milo Johnson who plays one of the morticians in the haunted house.
“This is the first time I’ve ever acted for the theater company so I’m kind of learning along the way, but I really lean into the character and do my research,” Johnson said. “I read over the whole script to make sure I’m bringing it to life.”
The cast of the haunted house have been working diligently these past few weeks during rehearsals and technical days to ensure the production is pristine for showtime. The three guides also attended separate extra rehearsals during PACK time in order to work on characterization and memorizing their script.
“[During rehearsal], one of the guides will start a [timed] run and once we get to a certain part where Avery thinks the next part should start, the next guide will go through it,” Eisenberg said. “It’s just kind of that process of running through and making sure we can get everything to be as close to her vision as possible.”
One of the prominent challenges Brasch and the rest of the cast faced was the short turn-around time in which the haunted house needed to be finished; this prompted the students to have to multi-task with other ongoing productions.
“For the haunted house, we normally have two rehearsals so it’s a very short amount of time to put it together because we have a lot of things going on in the theater company,” Johnson said. “We have our show for the elementary school kids and we also have our main fall musical, so the haunted house falls right in between them.”
Nonetheless, the cast takes in the bonding experience the haunted house provides for them, enabling them to work on something they are passionate about with a community they cherish.
“My favorite part [of the haunted house] has definitely been the community for the haunted house, especially because it’s something we do every year,” Johnson said. “You’re doing it with the people you know, meeting new people at the same time and you’re getting to work on something all together, so it’s really nice.
Be sure to check out the haunted house in order to fill the cliffhangers of the specific roles of the characters mentioned above.
“I’m most excited for [everyone] to see the actors up close,” Brasch said. “The haunted house gives the audience a much closer experience than any other show, so it really shows off the actors’ skills.”
