WildClaw Theatre Company proudly presents Deathscribe 2016, the Ninth Annual International Festival of Radio Horror Plays on Monday, December 5th, at 8:00pm. This collection of bone-chilling audio nightmares will be performed live at Deathscribe’s NEW VENUE, Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln Ave, Chicago.
I Let Them Out
By Julia Everitt
Directed by Gaby Labotka
Featuring Ada Grey and Mandy Walsh*
The little girl in pigtails said they were going to kill her so she let them out and now it’s time for the fun to begin. Is it all in her head or in yours?
Julia Everitt is a junior at the University of Iowa pursuing degrees in English on the Creative Writing track and Economics with a minor in Theatre Arts. Her play, Take Me Home, was a part of the 2016 University of Iowa’s Undergraduate Ten Minute Play Festival. Julia enjoys reading and watching plays and has seen 119 plays and counting. She is currently a co-captain for the University of Iowa Waterski and Wakeboard Team and former vice president of the University of Iowa Cosplay Club. Her ambition is to become a well-known playwright.
Recently WildClaw’s resident Mistress of Malevolence Ele Matelan transfixed this year’s Deathscribe finalists with her withering glare. Below are some of the answers she conjured from Julia Everitt:
How did you get into horror? What excites you most about writing horror, compared to other genres?
The funny thing is although I enjoy writing horror, I refuse to watch horror movies or tv shows or anything like that because I get scared super easily. Sometimes while I’m writing something meant to be scary I’ll end up scaring myself.
Writing horror is fun for me because you know it is going to be exciting and suspenseful. You’re allowed to keep secrets from the audience in horror in a way that isn’t as permissible in other genres.
What was the hook for you in this story? What came first, the story or the sound?
I actually first wrote this piece as a fiction piece and then converted it into a radio drama from there. I don’t normally write fiction so that was a bit weird for me and I worked really hard with the formatting of it to convey the mood of it that I wanted. When I converted it to radio, it got a lot easier. Instead of needing multiple fonts sizes and such silliness it was easier to give it to actual characters to say. So, while I’d say the story came first, the story was always meant to have a very specific sound to it.
What do you consider the biggest challenge in writing for “radio,” compared to traditional theatre?
Radio is different from theatre in that you know the actors aren’t going to be seen. If you want your audience to “see” something you’re going to have to describe it, which can sometimes sound unnatural because we usually expect the people we’re talking to to be able to see what we see. I’d say the trickiest part about writing for radio would be helping the audience see your story without it becoming unnatural.
What sound would you most like to see/hear performed in a Deathscribe piece?
Maybe… squishing? Squishing is always creepy.
Do you have any advice for aspiring Deathscribes?
Just do it. I always think the hardest part of writing is to actually just do the writing. Other than that, just be creepy, man.
What scares you?
Everything? Haha. Walking home alone late at night, the monster in my attic, frat boys, ketchup – you name it, it probably scares me.