Our minds have the innate ability to trick us into believing that something is lurking in the shadows or waiting under our bed. It causes our hearts to race and our imaginations to take us for a ride. That is where the grandfather of horror, H.P. Lovecraft, takes us: to the edge of reason and into the depths of the unknown. And Paper Street Theatre’s The Horror Within, an improvised night of H.P. Lovecraft, promises to be an evening of chilling stories that play on the fears we hold inside.
“The show is called The Horror Within for two reasons,” says Paper Street director Dave Morris. “One is the horror and the madness within yourself, and then the true horror is the horror we invent in our heads. He gives you just enough of an idea to know that there’s a monster, and then you imagine it and whatever you imagine in your head is much more frightening than he could tell you. Let the audience tell the story, let the audience imagine the monster, and they’ll all imagine what frightens them the most.”
The audience will have a chance to add to the anxiety by suggesting titles or locations for the stories to take place; the idea is to turn everyday things into something frightening.
“The style and the mood and the feel are Lovecraft, but the stories are from us and the audience. So we will get a few suggestions at the beginning of the show and each improviser will tell a story based on that suggestion,” says Morris, an improviser who has had his work staged at the Victoria Uno and Fringe festivals. “It will be a new story as if Lovecraft had written it; we never claim it will sound like a Lovecraft story, but it will feel like a Lovecraft story.”
The feel of a Lovecraft story is to play on what he calls our most basic human emotion: fear. Stories are set up with hair-raising, underlying tension; by hardly ever describing what the monster looks like, he leaves everything up to personal interpretation and the complexities of the human imagination. Another theme in Lovecraft stories is the old adage of “curiosity killed the cat.”
“The things that make his work timeless are those things: the fear of the unknown and the fear of madness or evil being inside of you, and the fatal curiosity of mankind,” says Paper Street cast member Missie Peters.
“For instance, we’ll try and clone a human just to see if we can do it. Maybe we shouldn’t be doing it, but we want to do it, so we’ll do it,” adds Morris.
For anyone who isn’t an adept Lovecraft reader, fear not: the show is sure to be a spooky night for all.
“The show is great for people who like Lovecraft and great for people who like improv,” notes Morris, “but it’s also great for people looking for a Halloween experience.”
And Lovecraft does make a great Halloween experience. His obsession with madness came from his strange upbringing. His father died in an insane asylum when Lovecraft was only eight; his mother died in the same institution years later. He was very reclusive and all he did was write; however, only three of his works were published during his lifetime. It was only after he died that other writers who he had corresponded with decided to put together a volume of his work.
“He was very agoraphobic, afraid of everything, so fear and madness are two very strong themes of his work,” says Morris. “The most famous quote of his is about how fear is the most basic human emotion and the most basic fear is fear of the unknown. That underlines all of his work… All of his monsters, his creatures are all indescribable. You can’t name them; you can’t explain what they are.”
The Horror Within
8 pm October 26 and 27, $12
Intrepid Theatre, 1609 Blanshard
paperstreettheatre.com