The Evolution of Brought To Life

Posted on July 24th, 2009 by BenRose

When Marty Scanlon and I first brought up what is now called Brought To Life at our proposal meeting, its working name was Scary Stories, and it was probably closer to The Iceman Cometh than what it has turned into over these past months. What was originaly going to be a devised exploration of all the ways to frighten people on the stage turned into an exploration of spirits, ritual, and the nature of performance.

How did this change come about?

Back at school a play I was putting up at the Armory Free Theatre fell through due to scheduling issues. I had a slot at a nice black box space and a three hundred dollar budget. I figured I might as well get a head start pushing through some of my questions about ‘Scary Stories’ by doing a week long workshop. That week was very productive, and a story all unto itself, and by the end our group of four actors presented what we came up with. It was all right, it definitely had its problems, but the biggest thing it was missing takes us all the way back to a discussion the ensemble had about theatre months earlier. We were talking about our mission statement and what kind of work we wanted to do. There was a wide variety of ideas, but the one overarching principle most seemed to agree on was that theatre should capitalize on the uniqueness of the art form. Theatre’s strength resided in the fact that it was a live experience, and anything could happen.

Where was I utilizing this strength in Scary Stories? What I had created at our workshop, in all honesty, was probably better suited towards film. Frightening visuals, loud noises, where did the live experience come into play?

That was when Brought To Life began to form in my head. When I began to question the validity of having a normal passive audience watching people play parts on a stage. From there, a month of percolating let everything fall into place. I started pursuing contact with a shaman my brother knew named Barnaby Ruhe. I began to send emails to all of the ghost research societies in Chicago and I read about hauntings. What if instead of trying to play at the idea of being afraid, we just actually made a frightening situation? What if, to ensure that we utilized the live experience part of theatre, we just made the show a completely live experience? There didn’t have to be a wall between our performers and the audience. We could acknowledge who we were and what we were trying to do. It all became very clear to me.

We wouldn’t play parts at all, we would summon a real spirit.