Duck Washington, covered in stage blood, screams during the “Scrimshaw” performance at the Twin Cities Horror Festival. (Dan Norman Photography)
As a scary lead-up to this year’s Halloween, The Crane Theater opened its 14th annual Twin Cities Horror Festival on Thursday, October 16. The festival, called the longest-running theater horror festival in the country, is a juried event featuring 13 different theatrical teams performing five performances each over the span of 15 days (through October 30).
The opening performance was “Songversations,” a one-night-only experience of “Song, ritual and storytelling that honors and celebrates the spooky season as well as our beloved horror community.”
The program listed its genre as “ceremonial feminist horror,” and noted that there would be more than one woman onstage at the same time. The performers, Shanan Custer and Rhiannon Fiskradatz, got the 80 audience members to sing along and then marched out of the theater, into the lobby and back in.
The second performance, “Camp Bludde: The Musical,” dealt with a familiar trope: a summer camp, deep in the wilderness, where no one can hear you scream. It was followed by “Scrimshaw,” in which a pair of married missionaries working in a Pacific whaling village take a mad whaler into their care after he was found floating adrift in the ocean.
Duck Washington, the event’s executive director and an actor in “Scrimshaw,” said this is the fourth year producing the festival at the Crane Theater. Previous festivals took place at the Southern Theater at Seven Corners. Altogether, the festival has hosted more than 150 different productions.
Four actors smile while dancing in “Camp Bludde.” Both shows were part of the festival, which highlights the intersection between live theater and horror. (Dan Norman Photography)
He said most of the troupes are local, but they have some touring shows that come through the festival every year. “Each spring we put in a curation panel that reviews proposals from interested groups and try to pick the lineup that makes for the best festival.”
Only one group, Dangerous Productions, has been in the festival every year. About the “spirit” behind the festival, Washington added, “I think horror and theater really mix well together and it is something that we do not see often on local stages. I think having a festival like this is truly a gift to our community. Most cities don’t have a dedicated festival dedicated to things dark and haunting.”
The Crane Theater is a project of Nimbus Theatre, which leases and operates the space at 2303 Kennedy Street NE, in the heart of the Mid-City Industrial neighborhood.