Fright and sound

IT is a live radio performance as moody and atmospheric as Dark Mofo, with a dungeon full of twisted sound effects guaranteed to have hairs standing on end.

Commissioned by the winter festival following a wellreceived debut last year, Radio Gothic returns with a vengeance in 2017 with two episodes that have been sending a chill through the Peacock Theatre.

Playwright and actor Carrie McClean said an enjoyable feature of performing the The

Hanniford Tapes and The Illustrated Girl was the use of foley, or the production of live sound effects from everyday objects.

“Everything we do is live and nothing is pre-recorded, so it’s always a fun challenge to see what will happen each night,” McClean said.

“The first story is about a psychiatrist who becomes obsessed with a client who murdered her husband, while second is about a girl who wakes up after a big night with a strange tattoo on her hand, and finding out how it got there.

“We do really explore dark emotions in both pieces, and there’s a real experimentation with the live sound.

“There have been visceral reactions from audiences.”

McLean, co-performer Katie Robertson, and sound engineer Heath Brown are kept busy on stage using balls of magnetic cassette tape to replicate the sound of footsteps on grass, an electric beardtrimmer coupled with a guitar to create a tattooist’s working needle, and using fizzing Beroccas for the “mystical” sound of a tattoo appearing on skin.

Director Briony Kidd said the performances also used “manipulated sound”, captured live by the actors and played back during shows.

“It’s almost like we are capturing the sound world from practical elements as we go,” Kidd said.

Dark Mofo’s popular Dark Park and Winter Feast have attracted thousands since opening on Friday night. Last night about 12,000 people poured through the Dark Park gates, and about 14,000 feasted at Princes Wharf No.1.

Dark Park and Winter Feast will reopen on Thursday.