This Halloween, find werewolves on the loose at Heritage Acres.
By David Lennam | Photo by Jeffrey Bosdet
Ian Case knows the value of a good scare. He earned local renown for his always-sold-out, live horror shows at Craigdarroch Castle.
You might recall his Giggling Iguana Productions luring us in for a take on classics like War of the Worlds, Fall of the House of Usher, Dracula or The Picture of Dorian Gray, moving the audience around the castle, inside and out, up and down all those stairs.
After a 13-year hiatus, Giggling Iguana is returning, now rebranded as 31 Iguanas, just in time for Halloween, with an original play that combines a western with a werewolf (or two) and sets it within Heritage Acres on Lochside Drive, just off Highway 17.
High Moon: A Werewolf Western invites theatre goers to move around, quite literally, within the action in the old-timey village that’s part of the historical open-air museum.
There’s a curious appeal to site-specific theatre that Case observed in those shows at the castle when audiences screamed as the House of Usher crumbled or oohed and aahed as an unworldly tentacle slithered out of a spacecraft.
“We really enjoy being immersed,” he says. “It’s a different experience for an audience than sitting and watching a play. When they’re right there it’s easier for them to step through that door of perception and suspend their disbelief and really get into it.”
Horror is, essentially, part of the human condition, something we’re all psychologically aware of.
“I think it is that seminal idea that there is a beast within and, as humans, it’s our job to try and change the beast within. We are driven by these base desires and impulses, and woe to anyone who lets those rule their life.”
Case created this unique take on a monstrous classic with playwright David Elendune. The pair had first discussed the project years ago and are finally unveiling their hour-long live performance of gunplay, werewolves and mystics, set just after the American Civil War.
“Nobody does westerns on stage anymore,” notes Elendune.
“And not many people do horror shows, either,” adds Case.
They’ve been collaborating since 1994 and have done, as Elendune points out, “everything from Bond to sci-fi to Winnie-the-Pooh.”
A conversation with the two lurches from Ionesco and Star Trek (original series) to Shakespeare, “Beowulf” and The Big Bang Theory. They seem to have their appetites aligned and writing together has allowed them to live in each other’s heads.
“I’m, as Ian would say, a ridiculous ideas man,” says Elendune. “Throw 6,000 things at the wall …” Case interjects: “Then at three o’clock in the morning my phone is going ping, ping — there’s another idea.”
The main challenge of producing outside of a real theatre, explains Case, is trying to problem solve visual thrills like creating mist, a rising moon or a forge for those silver bullets. “We’re looking for tiny bits of magic.”
“Right, and how do you transform someone into a werewolf?” asks Elendune. “That’s the biggie.”
Rod Peter Jr. and Ryan Kniel play two brothers cursed with lycanthropic tendencies. One embraces the hairy, horrible change. The other sees it as a curse. Wendy Magahay and Rosemary Jeffery also star in something Elendune says is as experiential as it gets for the viewer.
Case calls it sort of Bacchanalian.
“You allow the audience to muck around in their subconscious, the dirty side of humanity. That’s where the aliens, and people with holes blown through them, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Jack the Ripper, that’s where they all live.”
High Moon: A Werewolf Western runs October 15 to 31, evenings only, at Heritage Acres. Follow on Instagram @31iguanas.
