Have You Seen The Cast...? Anywhere...?

After recently seeing a film adaptation underway for the infamous theatre performance, The Woman In Black, claimed to be the scariest play in England, I was thrust back into my own experience of the play I once had back when I watched it in the London Fortune Theatre, its home residence.

'The book follows the story of Arthur Kipps, a junior solicitor, as he journeys to the small market town of Crythin Gifford to attend the funeral of a client, Mrs Alice Drablow. At the funeral, he sees a young woman with a wasted face, dressed all in black, standing in the churchyard.

Bemused by the villagers' reluctance to speak of the woman in black, Arthur goes to Eel Marsh House, Mrs Drablow's former abode, an old building in the middle of a marsh, cut off at high tide. Sorting through Mrs Drablow's papers, he finds a box of letters, and ultimately discovers the dreadful secret of the Woman in Black – to his own terrible cost.' - Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Woman_in_Black_(play)

A group of thirty-forty school kids, four support teachers, one trip to london and one visit to the Fortune Theatre London, to see The Woman In Black. "Hah...Lets see how scary this really is" the chorus rang out as we stormed the small creepy theatre. The lights dim, the curtain rises, the first half bores, sets the scene, slowly and peacefully. Toilet, packet of Revels, back in seat, second half. Man sleeps in empty house, all alone, hears banging upstairs, walks to closed door...door bursts open allowing the audience a brief moment to release their stomach contents, the next half hour, a nightmare. Wanting to walk out of a performance, bad enough, wanting th performance to end, terrible, I loved it. We wait outside afterwards, programmes are sold and bought for the play, we wait by the side of the theatre, for the coach to arrive. Two lonely men leave the side door followed by a selection of other men, the cast and crew of the small performance. No female. No female. Where was the female actress who played the ghost. Nowhere to be seen. We flick frantically through our programmes, the lead male, the supporting male the lead fem...no female. There was no mention or sight of any female performance in the whole play.

It was not scary until you think of it again, and again for a few nights reliving the story within the play, putting yourself within the performance. This is where I pay homage to theatre. For my own performance I will do a similar technique as the play did. Instead of featuring a credited list of cast members at the end of the film, I will only mention the directors and writers name. I want to make people think, once the curtain has closed, was that real, who where they, what was I watching? The lack of identity will only confuse and intrigue the audience even more. I shall also not be including a title for my performance, neither before or after the film. This will make the film just appear to the audience, be there and be seen, perhaps not acknowledged or understood. I want to adapt David Lynch to the point of creating something ambigous enough to not even feature actors/actresses, it can just be there.