Honoring the residents
“If we have the location already in mind …  we start staging it in the writing stage,” Rack said. “Like ‘Casting the Runes,’  the original story, none of it takes place in a mausoleum, but there’s a meeting point between these two men, and we’re in a mausoleum, so I have to figure out how to get them to the mausoleum.  It  actually ended up as a great story point because one of the men’s brothers had died … and so they meet at his brother’s crypt, and so it gives the meeting more weight.

“I actually changed the last name of the character to match the crypt that I was going to use.  I mean, that gives you an idea of how much we allow the space to decide things for us.  It just makes it that much more immersive — wow, that IS Hinkle’s crypt.  It kind of honors the people who are (buried) here, too, that’s the way I think of it — they’ve been brought back to life for this production.”

After the stories are written and casting finalized  (“All of our actors come back, and they want to do the show every year so we’ve kind of grown this company of actors,” Rack said),  the rehearsals begin and the mausoleum and cemetery are transformed as lights, sound, and other equipment is deployed.  For the cemetery, “It starts with a generator — we have a very large generator out there … we have to supply our own juice, that’s how we do it.  It’s not a small operation.”  A tent is set up in the middle of the cemetery where all the plays can be monitored and sound, light, and effects are controlled.

If it rains, the cemetery scenes go on anyway.  “Bad weather?  There’s no cancellation with Wicked Lit,” Rack said. ” Last year, the week of tech for our show ‘The Unnameable’ was in the rain — we were basically teching and setting up in the rain.”

Plugging away
As for the indoor scenes, “the biggest challenge within the mausoleum is that it’s old, and so the electrical grid is not what you would say is current, no pun intended,” Rack said.  “There are a lot of plugs that are along the bottom base along the corridors, but 60 percent of them don’t work, so we just have to find the ones that do.” 

Photo by Kyle Kleefeld.

This year, Wicked Lit will be running two separate productions:  Production A is a reprise of last year’s trio, Edger Allen Poe’s “Cask of Amontillado,” Charles Dickens’ “The Chimes,” and H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Unnameable.”  Production B will be  “A Ghost Story” by Mark Twain, “Casting the Runes” by M.R. James, and “The Body Snatcher” by Robert Lewis Stevenson.

Production A will start on Oct. 21, and Production B on Oct. 27.  “Once Production B starts, it will be running concurrently,” Rack said.  That’s six plays performed three times per night, with 180 audience members following their guides around the grounds from play to play, or scene to scene.  It’s a logistical puzzle, but Rack is confident it that it will work, creating a memorable evening of theater.

“Jonathan and Paul and I are really about the story, and the literature, and presenting thse stories ,” Rack said.  “I think what people are going to be surprised by is not just the fact that this is scary and this is spooky, that aspect of it … but of the tender moments that are in there, and the character interaction and chemistry and bonding of the characters and the stuff that’s underneath what’s going on. It’s not just a haunted house spook show,  it’s really about people and characters going through these situations.”

For more information, showtimes, and tickets, go to wickedlit.org.