Sunday Pages: Halloween Special
A little Poe, a little Stoker, and an escaped demon, under a full moon.
Dear Reader,
Halloween is going to be weird this year—and not in the way it’s supposed to be weird.
In the town where I live, we have a big Halloween parade, where half the town marches in costume and the other half watches. The parade is the civic highlight of the year, but because of the pandemic, it’s canceled—even though it’s an outdoor event, and everyone will be wearing masks because, um, it’s freakin’ Halloween. Yet another thing Trump has ruined.
So I don’t know what to expect this year. We’ve no idea how many trick-or-treaters might show up for socially distant candy. I don’t know what my kids are wearing, or if they’re dressing up, or if I am. It especially sucks because it falls on a Saturday this year instead of a school night, and on the night of a full moon, which should make for ideal Halloween conditions.
The pandemic hasn’t stopped Republicans from getting in the Halloween mood. Look, Mitch McConnell is already in costume as a necrotic corpse:
And check it out, one of the lady golf pros from Bedminster is dressed up like Melania Trump:
And I guess because of covid-19, these MAGA are masquerading as doctors:
Okay, moving on. For “Sunday Pages,” I want to share two spooooky projects from some friends of mine, to get in the mood.
First, theater! For the 18th season, artistic director Tally Briggs presents Drama After Dark: A Collection of the Macabre with Poe and Gorey. In the past, these shows have been produced outdoors (in California, rain is not the issue it would be here in New York). But during the pandemic, Briggs made the decision to take the production offstage and put it online.
“While some adjustments had to be made,” Briggs told Hollywood Gothique, “the Poe pieces have always been the theatrical equivalent of telling ghost stories around a campfire with a flashlight on our faces. So we made the pieces even simpler by having the actors speak directly to the camera and just tell the story. Sometimes, only using a single light source actually opened up new avenues of creativity with light direction and shadow, while speaking directly to each audience member, making it far more personal than it’s ever been.”
The Masque of the Red Death, which is after all about quarantining to avoid plague, couldn’t be more 2020-appropriate, but these are all excellent Halloween fare:
Please subscribe to the Drama After Dark YouTube channel, and if you’d like to donate, this is how.
Second: comics! The editor-in-chief of 123GO!, Phoebe A. Xavier—better known to the Twitterati as Aurora Phlox—has compiled a Halloween Anthology book called 13th Moon., featuring seven tales that range from scary to funny to shocking to flat-out horrific. One of the entries, “Dracula: Lord of the Future,” has been deemed official canon by the Bram Stoker estate! Here are some panels:
123GO! is in the midst of a 28-day Kickstarter campaign to fully fund the project.
Happy Halloween, my friends! Nine more days…
When I saw the troupe of donald’s doctors I assumed they had been sent over from Central Casting, and I kept waiting for them to break into a tap dance