I’ve periodically mentioned that I work with a small cabaret group here in Kraków, Poland. It doesn’t really have anything to do with horror though, so it doesn’t come up that often. However, we just did a Halloween performance and while I can’t claim that it was a horror piece per se, I think we managed some spooky surprises and covered a wide range of holiday appropriate fare. Also, I managed to include some horror music I appreciate, a teeny tiny bit of gore, and a few homages to some old time horror which I love.
That said, I hope you might indulge me in running down some of the acts we put together. This may be a bit of an odd exercise as most readers of this blog wouldn’t have a chance to come watch the show, but interesting play with the elements and tropes of horror can take place in all kinds of fields and I think it might be worth examining this one case which I am particularly close to. As already mentioned, the objective here was not to horrify, scare, or disgust. Rather, I’d say the intention was to delight, thrill, titillate, and tickle some funny bones – but this was all done using horror roles, situations, and imagery. For context, we regularly perform (about every 4-6 weeks, there’s a new show) as a “retro cabaret,” offering songs, dance, burlesque, comedy, and acrobatics (among other things), all with a mid-century or earlier vibe (now we’re developing a 20s revue).
This was the third Halloween performance the group has done (the first, in 2020, was on-line), and a few acts were repeated or adjusted from the past. I’ve previously discussed our silent movie comedy sketch, “Silent Screams” (is there any chance I stole that title from an episode of Itchy and Scratchy? I didn’t intend to, but it may be the case…), which was loosely inspired by The Old Dark House, The Phantom of the Opera, and just a sprinkle of Scooby Doo: with women in unrealistically elegant gowns exploring a creepy old house by candle light, discovering a horribly disfigured fellow and recoiling in terror, culminating in everyone running around, bumping into, and terrifying each other. It’s a simple scenario, but with our gimmick of lighting it with one mobile handheld light, I think we gave it some cinematic flair and we were able to recreate some of the vibe of the silent horror era. We accompanied it with an excerpt of the score to the 1925 Phantom of the Opera, and I think that lent some grandiosity to the affair.
In other repetitions, we had an introductory song to the tune of the Addams’ Family theme, welcoming the audience to the show and we had one number from the musical Phantom of the Opera (musically out of our period, but the setting qualifies), for which I prepared a two way mirror so the Phantom could appear behind her. Technically, it’s so simple to do, but the effect really works nicely.
We also repeated a really fun act we had premiered last year – a blacklit routine with dancers in black clothes with skeletons painted on, recreating the dance from the old black and white Disney cartoon. I didn’t really do much with this one, but I did paint a lot of blacklight responsive bones and I think the effect worked well and the dance was just tremendously cute: silly, skeletal fun all around.
Otherwise, everything was new or had been further developed since last year. Of those, I’ll mainly focus on those acts for which I had some creative input.
For example, we had an aerial hoop routine with a sleepy vampire coming home just before dawn and trying to get some shuteye, only to be tormented by a mosquito she just cannot catch, her attempts to kill this pest leading her through the twists and turns of her aerial tricks. I was on the side of the stage on a microphone, providing sound effects, most notably, the irritating, tiny bloodsucker (as opposed to the beleaguered, larger bloodsucker). Finally, just when she has finally squished it and gone back to sleep, hanging upside down from her hoop, her neighbors start drilling into the wall – doing some renovations.
We had a duet of I Put a Spell on You, with two well-put together “perfect housewife” types both casting competing love spells on the same Hollywood star whom they both desire. One is sewing a voodoo doll, while the other is making a potion in the kitchen. The hapless celebrity finds himself mysteriously summoned and pulled between the two singers until they finally just tie him up and decide to share his affections. They are not exactly witches, so much as they just magically use the ordinary objects of the home to work their will on this targeted lover, objects clearly gender coded and linked to housewifery.
This brings me to something we often deal with that could be problematic, but which I think we get away with: in doing a “retro show,” there is a lot of play with “traditional gender roles” – the “perfect housewife,” for instance. There is always a risk of just reifying harmful images and expectations, but I hope and generally feel that isn’t happening here, there being an appreciative distance such that a certain retro style and charm can be embraced without suggesting a continuance of outdated and harmful norms. It would clearly be wrong to call it “camp,” but there is some theatricality akin to drag in how, having put on a given role, a performer can simultaneously demonstrate their affection for an idealized style and maintain an element of actuality, of themselves – in this case, that of modern women who are not actually bound in kitchens and sewing rooms.
There was a lovely little scene about a lonely toymaker whose dolls come to life one stormy night, give him a brief moment of companionship and joy, and finally turn on him, eviscerating the poor chap and making a marionette of his corpse. Being more razzle dazzle than Grand Guignol, the spray of blood consisted of red glitter, but I did have fun making one costume gag: under his vest, the toymaker’s gut was torn open with a gaping wound and after a moment of assault with his back to the audience (during which the vest was opened), he could turn to reveal his bloody injury.
Most songs were in Polish or English, but we did include one Spanish language piece, the traditional La Llorona. I had known the folk tale previously, but only recently met the song when the singer suggested it. The tale is very much a central/south American version of Medea. A poor (in some cases, native) woman is abandoned by her rich lover (who could be a Spanish invader for whom she’d betrayed her family and people) and is subsequently left with his children. To get revenge, she drowns them in the river and is doomed to be a wandering ghost, the weeping woman, forever searching for her children – and thus a scary story to inspire kids to come home on time (“come home when I say or La Llorona will catch you and drown you in the river”).
The song, on the other hand, is all emotion and doesn’t really tell the story at all. So, for this one, we made a layered performance. In the foreground, we had a singer in black Dia de los Muertos garb, at a flower adorned gravestone, and in the background the story was enacted on a screen by dancers and shadow puppets. Finally, the dancer portraying La Llorona came in front of the screen and she and the singer shared a moment of sad dance before she continued on her way. I’d played with shadow puppetry many years ago on another project and it was rewarding to return to, though apparently my screaming baby was a bit too much and that may have detracted from the feeling for some. I had just wanted it to really feel like it was howling enough that anyone would consider dunking it in a nearby body of water. But hey, it was an improvement on my first draft.
I was in a small (mostly) pantomime sketch wherein a mad scientist enters her laboratory, unveils a body, takes a scalpel and cuts out the heart, then scoops out the intestines, and finally takes a chainsaw and removes the head. Then she’s not sure what to do and starts munching on an apple, deep in thought before having the eureka moment and putting the apple into the chest cavity, dropping a string of carrots (because that’s a thing – I linked a bunch of carrots together to look somewhat intestinal) into the abdomen, and finally taking a pumpkin and putting it in place of the missing cranium. After applying some jumper cables, a vegetative creature (me) with a pumpkin head rises from the slab and she puts it to work, sweeping the workspace.
Satisfied, she takes another apple and starts munching until the creature makes the connection between what she is eating and his own heart and moves in to crush her throat. I’ve been told it was funny and that people laughed, but I couldn’t tell as the pumpkin mask (the same one I’m wearing on my “About Me” page) really precludes hearing or seeing much of anything. Also, I got to use the pounding theme to Army of Darkness (from way after our typical era, but it’s orchestral so I can get away with it), which put a smile on my face.
There was a really cute burlesque routine (set to, i.a., Lil’ Red Riding Hood and the theme to The Bride of Frankenstein) in which the performer enters as Little Red, then strip teases into a wolf, with claws, a fur bikini, a tail, and a big scary wolf mask, which is just delightfully absurd. Then a hunter comes on and as they fight, she loses her clawed gloves, her fur panties and finally her hirsute bra, before he brings the knife to her throat and after a blackout, she is fully human again and he holds the wolf’s head, triumphant. It was a terrifically silly and hopefully unexpected idea and I think a really fun act. Plus, it’s always nice when my mother-in-law (a much better seamstress than I) helps out with a project, in this case, a tear-away fur bikini (I made the gloves).
Finally, we closed the show with a spooky witches’ Sabbath with the occultists in question meeting in a forest clearing to work their magic, do a bit of a blood ritual, and writhe organically in homage to a few different modern dance stylings (in which I did my best to rip off the same choreographers that inspired the work in Suspiria 2018). Unfortunately, they are set upon by angry villagers who tie them up, douse them with oil and burn them on a pyre. One moment later, the lead villager comes to the edge of the stage and – hard turn – starts singing a really jazzy, up tempo rendition of Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead. But after the first chorus, the witches rise from their pyre and approach the singer, before – another hard turn – whipping off their cloaks, revealing showy little red outfits beneath and jumping into the big finish production number with a kick line and all.
If I may say so myself, I really think this one came together and I just love the twists and turns of it. The abruptness of the changes just tickles my heart. And it’s all only a tad over 4 minutes long, so nothing can wear out its welcome.
Additionally, there were some other acts that I just had less to do with creatively, so I haven’t really detailed them. We had another witchy modern dance piece that was very cool, a Salome doing the dance of the 7 veils, a demonic burlesque, scary clown acrobatics, and a song from the Addams’ Family musical. Plus prizes to the audience for best costumes. All in all, I think there was a satisfying variety of acts and monsters and Halloween-ness.
On Halloween, I will say that it’s gratifying to see an appreciation for the holiday growing in this country where I’ve come to live. It hasn’t always been the case, and it still isn’t for everybody. All Saints’ Day on November 1st is a very important, very somber local holiday and there has been and continues to be resistance to what is seen by some as a crass, commercial, “American” import – an unwelcome cultural imperialism which may threaten significant, emotional traditions: taking this time to remember those who have passed. I know I am biased as I come from Halloween country, but while I can sympathize, I really feel like the two events can peacefully coexist. I think it is lovely and important to take time to remember our lost loved ones. Similarly, I think there is value in having this one magical day in the year when imagination and spookiness reign supreme and we can all tread a bit, even very lightly, on the dark side – I venture it’s even healthy for one’s relationship to the concept of death to be able to approach it playfully from time to time. That has a value as well. Plus it is just fun. So much fun, that there seems to be more of it here every year, so much fun that little Polish kids are out there like pioneers of Halloween, going trick or treating even though many won’t be happy to see them and best case scenario, won’t have any candy, worst case scenario, might think they’re little Satanists, so much fun that we can put together a show like this and people come. It may not be very “horror,” but it is totally “Halloween” and I think that’s pretty great!