The Lost Art of Haunt Acting

This year will be my 9th season involved in the haunt industry and my 14th year involved in some form of theater art. Art. . . What we do is an artform. Think about that for another few seconds! I’ll wait! . . . . . . . .

What we do is art! Awesome, wonderful, amazing art! When we build sets we take a step back and look at the scenery from all points. We imagine the scene in our heads as a movie scene: “The killer will come from here! The victim will flee through this trap door over here! The pop scare will come from this angle! It will really set the animatronic off to place it here!”

There is a method to everything we do. We really poor ourselves into our art. When I play a character at a haunt I really take my time to dive into the person I’m portraying. I write a quick back story if there isn’t already one. I find ways that story might influence the way he talks, the way he moves. I dive as deep into that story as I can and get to know the person I’m becoming. When I’m directing I make sure I give my actors the tools and ability to do the same with their character. Most haunts just aren’t putting that kind of focus into acting. If they are they need to do it better. By not putting a stronger focus on this they're simply selling their art short.

I feel like actors are the forgotten, last minute part of haunting. Like haunt acting is some long lost, ancient art. One that I’d have to travel a thousand miles by foot to a golden temple, mostly abandoned and covered by trees and moss. Here an old and wise master, the last master left at this old school of ancient arts, would force me to look into my soul and stain his new fence.

The majority of the haunts around me spend their time focused on sets and props. They probably don’t realize it, but they are leaving their actors to their own devices.That’s not always a good thing. I’ve got a group of friends that have long been sought after to act at every local haunt. The haunt we come from was actor and story based. Most of us have some sort of strong theater background. We’ve been taught how to act. The local haunts swoon over these friends and spend off-seasons buffering their egos to try and get them to move from haunt to haunt. It’s almost sickening. The reason we’re decent haunt actors is because we’ve been taught the art of acting. We still study it. We still strive to learn. We spend a good amount of thought on what we do. When I started directing at my local haunt the first thing I did was create a string of acting classes for all the new and veteran actors at my haunt. I employed my good friends and co-workers to help teach and train these kids. Everyone had a blast! We extended the classes by a week. We continued putting people out of their element. We encouraged character development. We made guys victims and girls killers. Put kids in rooms we never thought they’d be good in. By exploring new ground with these kids we found amazing talent we didn’t know that they all had. We came out of that season with numerous awards and pats on the back. It felt great. After that season other local haunts were talking to us after podcasts and asking Corey (co-host and co-director with me at the time) and myself how we found our “great actors.” When we’d talk about training classes a lot of people seemed to want to shrug it off. They seemed to think they didn’t have time. Let me tell you. If you want to push your haunt to the next level then you need to take your actors to the next level. Put your hammer down and train some kids. If you can’t do it, if it’s not your thing, then find other people to do it for you. I’m tired of walking through local haunts with amazing sets and walls only to be taken out of the experience by actors that can’t act. You need to give patrons a full scale experience. One you can't do with just nice looking sets.

You know why clowns are so popular? I have a theory about this. We as haunters seem to hate clowns. Every haunt has them. They’re like the black sheep of the haunt world. Customers seem to like them , so we keep putting them in our haunts. My theory is that people like clowns because they give you an experience. They make you laugh when you’re not scared of anything. They make the price tag worth it when you’ve had an awful time and they do something awesome to your scaredy cat girlfriend. They’re super interactive. They entertain you. They. Entertain. You.

Let's face it. People are harder to scare now more than ever. Haunts have been trying to get over this hump by resorting to more blood, more guts, and an overall more intense experience. It’s a fucking short-cut. You’re selling yourself short. One of the main things I stress when teaching haunt acting is that you can not scare everyone. You still have to give the people that aren’t scared their moneys worth. Give them an experience. Entertain them. By developing a good character with a good costume, and a little bit of wit, you can really give everyone and experience. You can make them laugh. You can simply bring them into a scene with believability. I like to make my guests feel like they’re walking through a play. Like a big, scary, zany, renaissance fair. People love this. One of the things that separated my haunt from others is that it had a unique story. It opened in the early 2000’s and created a story, which was sold so well by talented actors that it became it’s own local legend for a while. The great acting there gave the ability to sell the story and bring people out of the real world. It gave them an experience that they wanted to believe when they left. Hell, we sold that story on national television! With the help of great acting we created a local legend. Our main character was so recognized from billboards and posters that upon entering a room he could entice the shudders and screams of: “He’s real! He really exists!” He looked so cool with his curly moustache and he sold it so well that people wanted to believe he was real. I’ve never been to another haunt like it, I’m scared I never will.

The point of this writing is to show that all the great sets and props in the world can give you a great building. They can give you a good haunt. Without good acting you’ll never have a GREAT haunt. You’ll never give people an experience that they want to believe. Train your actors. Poor the time and attention into them that they deserve. Give them the time you give your walls and props. Give them the ability to be as dedicated as you are. Most importantly, give everyone involved an experience they can remember. You've got the set and prop part of your art down. Take your art to the next level by mastering it as a whole.

#haunting #returnofthelivingpodcast #rotlp #acting #tips