Listen to the Rain

Capitalization in original.

On Monday I went to my first Deathscribe performance! I've been to two other Wildclaw Theatre productions, their adaptation of The Shadow over Innsmouth five years ago--also, apparently they quoted my post on their website--and one called Future Echoes. I liked Shadow over Innsmouth a lot and was neutral on Future Echoes, but Deathscribe is kind of their headline event. I mean, they've been doing it for eleven years, and it still sells out. I only got tickets because worldbshiny (one of the Foley artists) posted secret tickets for friends of the staff and I snagged one that meant I got a seat. And the only open seat left upstairs when I arrived was right next to where stephen_poon and abby_the_hairapist were standing, so.

After an opening performance entitled "Please Stand By," involving a disaster where unknown radiation spreads around the world and causes psychotic behavior as expressed through someone flipping through radio stations, the actual Deathscribe got underway. There were five short plays and they were as follows:

1. The Forbidden Room: This was probably my least favorite of the five. Two girls live with their father, who has forbidden them from entering a certain room, after their mother "went away." One day, while playing hide and seek, the younger sister hides in the room and hears a voice speaking to her. Thinking it's her mother, she leads her elder sister into the room, and her elder sister reveals that it's actually their grandmother. The grandmother wants a more suitable host body, as the saying goes, but the sisters fight her off by stealing her necklace and escape. Or do they
   
   (they don't)
   
   It wasn't bad, it was just kind of by-the-numbers. The sound design was good, especially the echoing effects and volume, which did a good job of conveying being in a room crowded with dusty relics and also a murderghost. And I liked the performance of the grandmother a lot, but the story wasn't interesting to me and the "twist" was obvious from a mile away. Oh well.


2. Migraine: A woman suffers from severe migraines and also suffers from having an inconsiderate asshole boyfriend, a condescending asshole boss, and a dismissive asshole doctor. One day, she hears her migraine talking to her, and the migraine urges her to take control of her life. Stand up for herself. Stop being such a doormat. Tell off her boyfriend. Demand her doctor listen to her. Brutally murder her boss.
   
   This was stephen_poon and abby_the_hairapist's favorite of the five, and I liked it too, but I didn't think it was particularly horrific. The tone was more comedic, especially whenever the migraine was talking. It's fridge horror, I guess, since the migraine's characterization was a thrill-seeker who just wants someone to live to their fullest potential with no thought whatsoever to the consequences of anyone else around them. That's fine with the boyfriend, who was an asshole and breaking up with him was great, but cutting the doctor's cheek with a scalpel and murdering the boss with a blunt force trauma after projectile vomiting all over him is perhaps going too far. Very well acted, though, and I really liked the vomit sound effects (done by pouring canned beans into a bucket).


3. Whisper Trigger: This was my favorite of the selections because it involves ASMR, and I'm actually listening to an ASMR-inducing podcast right now, so.
   
   One of two roommates has a terrible time sleeping, so his roommate sends him a couple ASMR links to help. Neither of them help, but the third link, of a woman in a mermaid costume talking in low tones about slipping beneath the waves and letting the water take him, helps a lot. His roommate denies sending the third link and when he tries to show it to her there's nothing there, but the other links do nothing for him, so the next night he listens to part two and is told to give in to the water, let the water fill his lungs, and succumb. In the morning he talks about how well he slept and his roommate says she had to yell at him to shut up multiple times because he was coughing and sputtering all night. That night, he listens to part three, and does not wake up again.
   
   The mermaid's actress and sound effects triggered my ASMR, so obviously I was going to be partial to this one. But I also liked the sound effects of the waves, and the way that the roommate's pounding on the door and pleading for him to wake up got fainter and fainter as the mermaid and the water grew louder and louder. It's the way I'd want to die, slipping slowly into darkness. I mean, minus the water in my lungs and the drowning. But you can't always get what you want.


4. Floris: This was the most overly horrific selection. It's set as a debriefing of three nurses in an elderly care facility after a fire consumes part of it. They got a transfer from another facility that also suffered a fire, named Floris, who sits in her wheelchair and talks about her son outside and how he's burning. The nurses manage to put her to bed, after which she escapes, terrifies her roommate, and chases the nurses back to the nursing station while bounding down the corridor on her hands and demanding to know where her son is. One of the nurses distracts her and leads her to back to the cafeteria, claiming that her son is outside the heavy iron doors out to the courtyard, and then runs as the heat and light grows behind her.
   
   My favorite part here was the framing, with cuts between the three nurses giving statements to an investigator and the three of them in the thick of the incident. This is the one I think would most have benefited from being a short film. A lot of the horror was in Floris's movements and behavior, and they did a good job of conveying it through sound effects (hands slapping on tile floor and so on), but seeing it on the screen would be great.
   
   ...for someone else. I don't do well with visual horror.


5. Subject #9: This was the most overtly comedic, though only once the twist is revealed. Two scientists are working on an animal experiment, saying that they have a little over three weeks to succeed or the master will kill them for incompetence. They successfully implant a power source without killing the animal, and when they turn it on, the radiance blinds the poor beast. One day they find it hovering in its cell, staring at nothing. But eventually they report their success and show the master the results, and on the final day they turn on the power and the master laughs maniacally at their success: "hahahah...mwahahahahhaha...HO HO HO!"
   
   And then he rides off into the sky with the jingling of sleigh bells.
   
   I mean, this involves severe animal cruelty and the actress portraying Rudolph's whimpering was really pitiable, so this would definitely win in the horror category for a lot of people, and it was well-told. abby_the_hairapist figured it out when the scientists talked about the hovering, whereas I figured out when the master appeared but before any of his lines. And then it was pretty obvious at the end.
   
   It was a great adaptation of an old story about how deviation from the norm will be ruthlessly ground down unless it can be exploited by the rich.

I was surprised that it wasn't as horror-inducing (almost said "horrible" but that's not what that means) as I was expecting. I guess it's down to what selections get picked, since there were two hundred submissions and they whittled it down to five. There were also horror-themed sponsor advertisements and some songs, though the only one I remember at all was a parody of "Santa Baby" involving asking Santa to come kill everyone on the singer's hit list. The MC also told perhaps the most horrible tale of the whole night during the moments when he needed to stall for time--the tale of the bedbugs he's dealing with in his apartment.

meowtima was also there, but he had a seat on the main floor, in the lettuce spray zone, so I only got to talk with him at intermission.

It was great! If I'm around I'll go again next year and see what the new offerings are, and this time I'll buy tickets earlier so I don't get the leavings or need to rely on worldbshiny.