Stage fright
Viewers beware, you’re in for a scare at Goosebumps Alive
If you’re the kind of person who follows innocent requests to “say cheese” with “and die” in a hushed whisper, then Goosebumps Alive, an immersive theatrical adaptation of RL Stine’s best-selling horror series, is for you. We spoke to writer/director Tom Salamon about what to expect.
Why is Goosebumps a good fit for the stage?
There are so many interesting little stories and twists and turns that we thought it would be an exciting thing to try to tell all these vignettes on the stage, especially in an immersive setting where there’s lots of stuff to play with, and see and hold.
The show is aimed at adults, is that purely for nostalgia’s sake?
The approach we’re taking is really to try and focus on the audience that read them as kids and so there’s a nostalgia factor, but we’re also updating it and modernising it for grown up fears and anxieties. How are you approaching the immersive aspect of the production?
There are different ways to approach immersive theatre. This is decidedly not participatory, but we’re taking any opportunity we can to put our audience into the middle of these scenes and make them feel the anxiety of the characters.
Which stories are you adapting?
A lot of the stories that jumped out at us are based on what we could explore in terms of the inner psychology of the characters. By the same token you can’t make Jurassic Park without the T-rex, so there are certain fan favourites that we wanted to address.
There’s also a separate production for kids, what can you tell us about that? It’s a separate thing, but it’ll reflect some of the stuff that we’re doing. We really want to steer ours for adults, so ours is going to be frightening and anxiety-provoking and hopefully thought-provoking. The kids one much less so, but still an engaging, visceral experience.