WildClaw Theatre Company proudly presents Deathscribe 2016, the Ninth Annual International Festival of Radio Horror Plays on Monday, December 5th, at 8:00pm. This collection of bone-chilling audio nightmares will be performed live at Deathscribe’s NEW VENUE, Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln Ave, Chicago.
Dead Ringer
By Tim Griffin
Directed by Aileen McGroddy
Featuring Dave Fink, Lee Brophy and Darren Hill
Father Ronan gave his sermon in the cemetery that night as Fergus and Doyle drank over the lonely resting place of Patrick Cahill. And as the fog rolled in, they told the tale of the strange bell on his grave and wondered if they did indeed hear something…
Tim Griffin’s horror radio play Imaginary Fiend tied for Second Place in Deathscribe 2015, and has also been chosen for Wildclaw’s Best of Deathscribe, to be performed at Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago and the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami, FL. His writing work includes stage plays Deadworry, Ticklebrains, Murder in Mirthburg, Closer to Free, and Re: Alice, as well as the short films Snare and The Cellar Job, and the full-length creature feature Tail Sting. A graduate of Illinois State University Theater, Tim has performed on stage and/or screen in Chicago, Los Angeles, Dublin, and Moscow, and is also an accomplished musician and fight choreographer. He is of indeterminate age and is currently at large.
Recently WildClaw’s resident Mistress of Malevolence Ele Matelan transfixed this year’s Deathscribe finalists with her withering glare. Below are some of the answers she conjured from Tim Griffin:
How did you get into horror?
Edward Gorey and The Twilight Zone (Rod Serling/Richard Matheson/Charles Beaumont) were my “gateways” at age 9. After that, everything else.
What excites you most about writing horror, compared to other genres?
What’s fun about writing horror, especially short horror, is that it encourages the writer to be economical. Most horror writers’ best work is their short fiction (Poe, Lovecraft, King, Barker), and it may be because they don’t get bogged down in superfluous filler. Good short horror fiction is, by its very nature, concise, and is often more powerful (and scarier) because of it. I’ll bet there’s some manner of applicable metaphor about the jugular, but it escapes me at the moment…
What was the hook for you in this story? What came first, the story or the sound?
I guess the sound came first… a desperate bell in a graveyard on an autumn night. But moreso, the silence beforehand: the absence of the bell, and the horrible anticipation – the dread – of it ringing, I’ve thought a few times that this play’s pauses are just as important as its speeches, in slowly building the fear.
What sound would you most like to see/hear performed in a Deathscribe piece?
Something squishy.
Do you have any advice for aspiring Deathscribes?
Have fun (and other vague words of encouragement so as not to reveal my tricks to the competition)!
What scares you?
Sharks. I think that’s completely reasonable.