A ghost story so scary it even scares its writer! Worthing dates
Tim Foley knows exactly what's going to happen. Of course, he does. He wrote the thing.
But that doesn't mean that it doesn't still spook him out.
It Walks Around The House At Night still gives him the chills – just as it will us when it tours on Monday and Tuesday, November 9-10 to Worthing’s Connaught Theatre, the latest production from ThickSkin, the company behind Driftwood and How Not To Drown.
Tim’s ghost story will be directed by Neil Bettles.
“I love ghost stories,” says Tim. “And I specially love ghost stories on stage. I've always been drawn to the unknown. I was one of those kids drawn to everything from Tolkien to Doctor Who. I was a big fan of the made-up and the mythical. Ghost stories are just brilliant on the stage. I saw The Woman In Black at an impressionable age. And I loved Ghost Stories. There's a really strong tradition of ghost stories on stage.
“But I don't think I actually believe in ghosts. I don't think I'm a very perceptive person. I imagine a ghost could be sitting in front of me and I wouldn't know! But I know plenty of people who really do believe in ghosts and I just find that so interesting.
“I tend to think of theatres as being quite sacred places when you think of all the productions that happened there in the past. And I feel the same with churches. I love that. You have that sense of their past and it's the same with stately homes. And that's why this play is both a ghost story and a haunted house story.
“I did a play with ThickSkin last year called Driftwood, and there is a moment towards the end where something very scary and magical happens. It was easy to write but actually when I saw it on stage, it really was scary, and I ended up scaring myself.
“It was very simply done. It was just lights and movement but it really unnerved me… And I said that to the director Neil and I said ‘Can we do something spooky next time?’ and he just said yes and so that's what we've done. I already had this idea of an actor who's out of work walking around this house. It wasn't necessarily going to be a play. It could have been a radio drama but that's what the starting point was for this play now.”
When an out-of-work actor takes a job playing a ghost at an old countryside manor, he expects a few cheap scares but soon uncovers something far more frightening.
Joe is barely scraping a living working in a bar. So, when a rich handsome stranger offers him an unusual but well-paid gig, he can’t say no. But the role turns chillingly real as Joe begins to suspect that something else is lurking in the shadows.
The play sees Joe walk the grounds alone for five long nights, but is something following?
“I think there are two different modes of scaring in the theatre. There is the growing dread, the growing tension and I think that comes into this a lot. I think the writing helps but it's also about the actor’s delivery but then you've also got the jump scares. People can think that those are a bit cheap but the best ones end with a bit of nervous giggling and can be really effective. And again a lot of that is done with movement. And it is about all these things coalescing into the one thing,”
And from that you get the scares…