Interview WildClaw Theatre’s Brian Amidei on the revival of the dying horror radio drama

Formed two years ago by a group of veteran Chicago actors, horror theater company WildClaw Theatre first conceived of Deathscribe, the annual radio festival staged at the Music Box, as a fundraiser. Deathscribe showcases the work of five different authors, each of whom writes an original, 10-minute script for the company to perform with the aid of Foley artists creating live sounds. Before the second installment of Deathscribe tonight, again at the Music Box, WildClaw Theatre Managing Director Brian Amidei spoke with The A.V. Club about why horror is a bitch and what exactly the company does to its theater seats during performances.

The A.V. Club: What motivated you to start Deathscribe?

Brian Amidei: The horror genre took very well to radio in the '40s, '50s, '60s, and '70s. Radio is now dying. So we figured: Why not take a dying art form and perform it live in a theater that wasn’t designed by live performance? Most people don’t like horror. But put it into a radio environment, or an audio environment where they can sit back and use their imaginations, and they really are attracted to it. I’ve found that in this age of over-stimulation from the Internet and television, that being asked to just sit and listen is a really fun experience.

AVC: How is putting on a horror radio play similar to the other work in theater you’ve done?

BA: It’s very similar in the sense that none of it will work if we don’t have fully developed characters, or if we don’t have interesting storylines. We still need to pay attention to all of the tenets of drama and theater. If we don’t take the audience on a journey, then it’s just a haunted house. There’s something about horror, when done with respect to character and situation, that illuminates the human condition as well as any dramatic form. It’s a thrill to do from a performer’s angle. It’s a bitch to clean up, because blood gets everywhere.

AVC: How do you maintain that intimacy from theater to radio?

BA: It’s primarily a live performance, so part of the intimacy is seeing how the performance works. When you see the actors, and they’re delivering their lines, and across the stage you see the sound-effect Foley artists doing the corresponding sound, and there’s a disconnect—that in and of itself is sort of intimate. You can close your eyes and use your imagination, and then, when you open your eyes, you can still see what’s going on in front of you.

AVC: The WildClaw mission statement says "the fantastique holds an intimate power in the realm of theater."

BA: Most of the horror product these days is through film, which is a giant, oversized, high-volume experience. It’s a two-dimension experience. One of the best compliments we got was from our first show. Somebody asked what we did to the seats in the theater during a particularly climatic moment. I told her that we didn’t do anything. She said she felt something crawling up her back. I thought it was the greatest thing I’d ever heard. She was freaked out that she thought we were doing something behind her. That’s not a sensation you get in movie theaters.