by Jo Satana

First and foremost I’d like to acknowledge that, yes, we took some time off… so what? Sue us or or something. It felt good to focus on other things for a while but, like the best case of genital herpes, we’re back with a vengeance. Well, we’re down there anyways.

Summer is upon us here at Satana home base and for Montrealer’s that means only one thing: unbearable humidity, drunk Americans, and a fucking shitload of festivals… and what better way to resurrect “mein column” here than to tip my hat off to the festival that is kicking off all festivals: the 20^th annual Fringe festival (http://montrealfringe.ca/en)?

Montreal Fringe fest is, if anything, indescribable as it brings avant-garde stage, music, and cinematic experiences to a ready and willing public. There is but one guiding principle that binds all the activities together: anything goes… and for the closed minded interloper that means stay the hell outta the way.

However, if a blood-lusting horror fiend were to ask me to characterize this year’s Fringe events so as to suggest something with a dark tint-like sensibility, I would point them to Michael Mitchell’s FEAR LIATH.

FEAR LIATH – “Four women. An isolated farmhouse. A monstrous terror clawing to get in” – runs  on  Jun 12, 13, 14, 16, 19, and 20 at Théatre LaChapelle in Montreal.

NightmaRevue has sat down (virtually) with published author, writer, playwright, and director Michael Mitchell (but more importantly, he’s a NightmaRevue contributor!) to shed some light into his bleak and gripping theatre production…

1) So, doing the writer-director thing eh? I bet you’re real popular with the ladies?

The best part of working in theatre (compared to working in movies) is that, once you’ve done the isolated, solitary writer part, you can jump into this incredibly social collaborative director part. Movies seem to cast the writer aside once the writing is done. It definitely makes the long nights alone at the desk easier to deal with when I know there’ll be this crackerjack gang of talented people to hang out with when I’m done writing.

2) Seeing as how you completely dodged that one, I`ll consider it as an icebreaker. So, writer and playwright with a taste for the dark stuff, how do you find the marriage of the two: theatre and horror that is? Both are usually effective when things are left to the imagination, both have their own pack of rabid, open-minded followers, yet both seem to be subjected to opposed stigmas – the former usually associated with the highbrow and the latter with the lowbrow. Can you speak of the marriage between the two, their appeal, and how one markets such a monstrous mating?

First off, I NEVER think about marketing (and maybe that has hurt me a bit along the way). To me, it’s about staying true to the genre and the medium; that is, horror and theatre. I still believe that horror has a lot of life left in it and a lot of great depth to mine. As long as I respect the genre as a whole, I feel I am doing my job. And then, to me, the appeal would be that it’s something offered to the public that is genuine. And I have never felt that highbrow horror doesn’t work. In fact, to me, it’s the ONLY thing that works. Clive Barker is incredibly literary. The stuff he did in Weaveworld is literature and art. And what movies are more revered than Silence of the Lambs, Jaws, and Cape Fear? I think there are people trying to make a quick buck, and that irritates me. To me, loyalty (like from a horror fan) should be rewarded, not preyed upon. Give them their money’s worth! That’s my motto. Haha.

And theatre has some GREAT dark works. Titus and Hamlet (by Shakespeare, of course) are soooooo dark. So is Romeo and Juliet for cripes’ sake. Two teenagers kill themselves in front of us. I am actually still trying to figure out where and when society decided the dark stuff wasn’t highbrow.

I’ve seen 70-year old women enjoy my dark work on stage and I truly believe that, as long as you tell a good story, you will reach everyone. People don’t have to get ALL of a work to enjoy it. Some get more of it, some get less, but I think everyone gets something to some extent.

3) How do you approach horror theatre for the modern era? How do you balance reserve with a crowd hungry for Grand-Guignol’esqueries? Or is the horror audience more sophisticated than they seem?

As a fan first myself, I guess I approach it from the viewpoint on what turns me on. I think the best part of writing for the modern era is that you have to push yourself past cliches ’cause we’ve all seen most of it already. And I guess I kind of answered this before, I truly believe the horror audience is quite sophisticated. I don’t think they’re being well-served at all times.

4) Are there any pitfalls when bringing the elements of horror onto a live stage, for example, when compared to other mediums such as literature, audio, or cinema?

I think there are only positives. The great thing about theatre is that this one audience gets to share this one show on this one night together. Nothing is ever repeated exactly the same in theatre or opera or dance. So we get this unique community experience. We get to sit around a campfire together. AND for a writer it is invaluable, because the audience tells you immediately if you suck or not!!!

5) Fear Liath (a pun on words in itself) has floated around for a while and has seen a few permutations. Can you talk about how it all started, where it’s been and why you decided to bring’er back?

It actually started as a “Blair Witch” thing. I toyed with the idea of a “found recording” that could be played over the radio. But the CBC told me to stuff it, so I put it on a shelf. Then, a fantastic theatre company in Edmonton decided to put it on one Halloween. They do an annual spooky show. Thing is, they do staged-readings (no moving, no set) so a radio-driven piece was perfect for their needs. They ended up broadcasting it (it’s on YouTube now) as well. THEN an incredible actress I know, Christine Leclerc, talked about doing a show together. So I figured we would just remount the staged-reading. But then, of course, one thing led to another and here we are with a full-fledged stageplay.

And then we naturally settled on the Fringe Fest. With the Fringe, you get sush a varied, open, eclectic audience that it’s the perfect place to showcase something offbeat. AND you also get to charge tiny ticket prices. The Fringe gives you the chance to bring a high-quality product to an appreciative audience for under $5. I would recommend that everyone do at least one Fringe show in their career.

It’s funny, because the set designer talked about getting a “Blair Witch vibe” from the play. So, I suppose the roots are still in there somewhere . . .

6) Can you describe Fear Liath in 200 words or less?

Four women. An isolated farmhouse. Bigfoot. (Did it in 6!)

7) What’s so scary about a farmhouse in the woods anyways, just a bunch of leaves and squirrels right?

Or is it just leaves and squirrels?Are the leaves massing themselves into some evil incarnate? And are the squirrels 10 feet long with razors for teeth and a taste for human entrails? Now, I’ve never actually seen a horse-sized squirrel, but that don’t mean that there ain’t one out there somewhere.

8 ) Talk to us a bit about the team you put together.

Oh, the team! Wow! Ashley Dunn, Christine Leclerc, Desiree Reid, Kristina Sandev. These are actresses that have been making waves for some time now. To make a long story short, I got very, very lucky with the cast. I’m still not sure how I got so lucky. But I am sure you’ll be hearing their names for years to come.

9) Women and vulnerability: are some clichés unavoidable when putting the two together?

I’m glad you brought this up, because this play isn’t actually about women being vulnerable. This is about people reacting. Not women, not men. People. To me, there is way too much misogyny and gratuity in most horror out there.  I’m a feminist, so to me, women can do everything that men can. (Aside from the 15% difference in physicality—it’s not likely women will ever bench press more than men.) So, if the women are in any way vulnerable, they aren’t any more so than men would be in the same situation.

One of the women knows how to start a car if the engine is flooded, one of them is out repairing the barn, etc. Hopefully, when watching this play, the audience doesn’t pay attention to what gender the characters are. I really wanted to get away from the “How would a man react? How would a woman react?” bullshit. No… how would a PERSON react? Men and women are equal, period. If you’re going to show a woman’s breasts in a movie, show a man’s butt. [Editor’s note: I believe the equivalent would be testicles.]

Even it up. Quit pandering to alleged, supposed demographic needs. Just tell the story and stay away from the cheesy titillation and gratuity. Nudity and fornication in fiction is stupid and less than useless 99% of the time. Hitler loved looking at statues of naked men—there’s reason enough to keep nudity out of a good spooky tale. Although, I do think it was important in Salo. But it’s very rare. Boy, don’t get me started, eh?

9) Having seen a version of the play (an early version is available for streaming online at your everyday user created video streaming site), and having read a treatment of it, I can attest to its valued minimalism. I find that there’s a wink and a nod to old time radio programming. How have you prepared your actresses for such an approach? I imagine that stage actors and voice actors require different forms of support. How do you bridge the gap between the two?

You are exactly right, there was a wink. But that’s what’s also great about this show. We have stepped away from the old time radio completely. I feel like they’re two different plays entirely now. You want the radio version, here it is. You want the mainstage version, here it is! Haha. So, to answer your question, I didn’t have to prepare the actresses because I wrote all of that stuff out of it. The minimalism is still there, but it’s more on the physical side now. Radio is ALL language, but in the theatre, silence can be the norm.

10) Can you talk about set and sound design?

The sound design was exciting because, on the one hand, it pretty much takes care of itself, and on the other we had to rely on Rob Denton’s superior talents. Anytime you go into the woods at night, you invariably hear really strange sounds. Most of the time it turns out to be an owl, or a raccoon or even just some animal that is angry, lonely, hungry, talking, whatever. The things is, there are unsettling noises even if the source turns out to be innocuous. So we got to take sounds that you would hear anytime you went into the woods and then move them to sounds that you would only hear if a sasquatch was on your tail! There are some fantastic alleged recordings of Bigfoot vocalizations. They may all be hoaxes, but they are still fascinating. So, we could take a real wolf howl (or is it?) and then have a sasquatch growling right on the porch. So Rob added flavour and effects to create a bit more of a supernatural (which is what a Bigfoot kind of is) feel to its vocal sounds.

The set is fairly minimal. We focused on the essentials in order to keep the audience focused on the tale. Ultimately, storytellers are all just sitting around a campfire spinning a yarn. So, if we have to, we should be able to set a candle up in the middle of the room and do the play around it. These actors can handle anything anyway. They are imbued with talent and skill. We could do this in the dark. (Please don’t take me up on it!) We do have an awesome “wow” moment when one of the women transforms our minimal set, however. Give them their money’s worth, I say!

11) Can you talk about venue? Where do you see Fear Liath ultimately?

I see Fear Liath anywhere. Small stages, large stages, outside, inside. I tried to write it so people with no budget can play it as easily as people with a $200,000 budget. Ultimately, if one wanted to give Fear Liath a go, I would hate for a lack of funds to stop them. My goal is to share a redemptive spooky tale with as many people as possible.

12) Do you think that such a project is, for all intensive purposes, intended to be absorbed on a small scale? Is there viability for such an intimate topic to be rendered consumable for the mindless masses occupying megaplexes these days?

I think the masses are only mindless until you give them something to mind. I also think that the more intimate a topic is, the more people it ends up touching. I think we lose people when we try to be too general. It’s a dichotomy of sorts that I don’t claim to understand, but it always seems to work that way. Make it specific and it will have general appeal; make it general and it will have no appeal. It’s like Guns n’ Roses. They wrote about the most personal, intimate things they knew, and then had the best selling debut album in history. I’m guessing tons of “tough guys” laughed when they first heard “Sweet Child O’ Mine” in the studio. But two years later every hard rock band in the world was trying to copy them. The record companies try to sell us pre-packaged crap but we go out and buy Guns n Roses and Nirvana and Lady Gaga records.

13) The last question was a little tongue and cheek. Physically speaking, I don’t think that everything is meant for a large audience, but at the same time, isn’t there a form of snobbery with both theatre and horror that lends itself to smaller cliques?

True, people like Diamanda Galas and Sarah Kane are probably meant for smaller audiences. But I think there’s snobbery everywhere. There are coffee snobs and sneaker snobs and television snobs and PhD snobs. I think snobs are attracted to what they think is power–rarefied knowledge. Mind you, I LOVE snobs. Snobs have taught me everything I know. But my goal isn’t to win snobs over. My goal is to write stuff I can look at one day and see that I did better than I thought I could. It could still be a giant piece of shit, just that it’s a little less shitty than it could have been. It’s like scoring the game-winning touchdown. You’re surprised and thrilled that you were able to actually fucking do it at all.

14) Is there a horror play in particular that ABSOLUTELY needs a modern theatrical run (as in as play treatment)?

I think PSYCHO needs to be on stage. The movie is too predictable now, yet there is a metaphor in there that can still speak to a wide, wide audience. And there are ways to still make it fresh.

15) What horror works have moulded you the most throughout your carreer?

Oh, man. All of them. Every Friday night my cousin and myself rented and devoured any one we could get our hands on–even the less-than-fulfilling ones. I do go back to HALLOWEEN, EVIL DEAD and THE THING a lot. There’s some pure genius storytelling in them three films, man. And the TWILIGHT ZONE movie, just can’t get enough of that stuff.

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Seek’er out while you can folks. More screams to come from your friends here at NightmaRevue!

So long sunshine, I`m out!