Practical and Theatrical Scare Acting

My first love of scare acting (besides simply scaring people senseless) is interaction with guests as my character. Half of them are completely shocked that you responded to something they said. Simply put, being able to improvise your lines and respond to guests in character is a challenge but can make for a great scare. Why talking can actually be a terrible idea Some haunts have strict policies against any of their characters talking, there is a very good argument for this. Guests, in a sense, often see actors as "props" in the haunt. They know the actors are alive but they tend to dehumanize them. This makes sense because actors don't typically "look" human while they're in character. Most importantly, you really  want them to not see you as human. You are asking them to suspend their disbelief and assume, while they are in your haunt, that they are in some kind of real danger. If not done properly, improvising or even talking in general, can hum...

We get a lot of new scare actors every year at  A Petrified Forest  and a good percentage of them pick it up quickly and do a great job. Unfortunately you can't always train people to the extent you want in the time you have allotted to train them. This is where many haunters discover that people don't all have the common sense you expect them to have and realize too late that some things (they didn't think they needed to teach) should have been taught. Here is a list of do's and don'ts that most Haunts follow. Some are from personal experience and some I've learned from others in the industry. Some will not apply based on the Haunt you are working in, but most are generally expected wherever you work. I'm going to list the Don'ts first because they're more important in my opinion. It's my blog don't judge me. Don'ts NEVER say "get out" or anything similar to a guest. It sounds incredibly unprofessional. If they aren...

Why am I a scare actor? I love doing it and it's changed my life in a very real and literal sense. The funny thing is that I happened into it entirely by accident, or divine intervention. This is a long story and I've tried to shorten it, but you can't just jump into it without a little background information. I may joke around a lot, and I know I will never be accused of being the quiet one at my haunt, but when it comes to sharing my feelings, it’s actually quite difficult for me. The humor is more of a self-defense than a need to be comical; I’m very apprehensive about sharing my feelings and always afraid I’ll be hurt if I let people know my weaknesses and fears. Being funny relaxes people and it also keeps them at a safe distance too. That's why showing my honest feelings about scare acting is actually quite difficult. I intentionally don’t tell people at A Petrified Forest my story for quite some time, because I wanted them to see me as I am now, not what...