By MAEVE Z. O’CONNOR
Special to the Keizertimes
When walking past the Keizer Cultural Center, one might be inclined to picture rows of dusty books, or historical relics sleeping quietly in glass cases. But it’s the theater upstairs that has been the source of all the recent screaming. Eager young performers pour in and out, cultish props arrive by the bushel, and an uncanny green light streams from the LEDs and blazes in the hall. It’s all leading up to one thing: the world premiere of a brand new horror play—Lovecrafted.
Lovecrafted, by Laramie Dean has never before been seen and the team at Keizer Homegrown Conservatory is working tirelessly to bring it before its very first audience. The conservatory (KHC) is the youth-centered offshoot of Keizer Homegrown Theater (KHT.) The program seeks to create performance opportunities for young adults that meet them at their level while giving them ample room to grow as artists. Each show accepts auditionees between the ages of 16 and 22, and also casts a small number of adult mentors to work alongside the younger performers. This schematic allows space for new works to blossom—the strange, the daring, the absurd. The older actors infuse the show with professionalism and nuance, helping to guide the youth cast. The younger actors bring a fresh, hungry energy to their work that is nothing short of electric. What you see onstage at KHC might challenge you; it might make you jump or question or recoil. But beyond that, it might make you think, and therein lies all the merit. Lovecrafted seems almost hellbent on the latter, introducing its prospective audiences to an onstage nightmare that is simultaneously ferocious and inspiring.
This adaptation of a H.P. Lovecraft book is not the first work of Laramie Dean that has been seen on the KHC stage—the conservatory staged Dean’s adaptation of Dracula in 2022, and more recently Finding Jo March, his reimagining of Little Women.
I spent my weekend talking to Lovecrafted’s director, as well as one of the principal actors. Here are just a few highlights from that conversation. First, a few words from Maria Karcher, the actor behind Lovecrafted’s most imposing character.
KEIZERTIMES: Is it any different for you, as an actor, to play a character in a world premiere? There are no past performances for you to watch, and no agreed-upon choices to be made for Thurston, the character you portray. How has that been different than portraying a character in an established work?
MARIA KARCHER: It was actually somewhat intimidating at first, because I did not know what I was doing, per se. However, I find that I’m actually enjoying it a lot more because there was no Thurston before me. I find myself drawing from myself and my imagination—we’re more one and the same than we would have been otherwise. I’m more one with the character than if I were just basing it off of someone else.
KT: What has been your biggest challenge, and what has been your favorite part?
MK: It was hard developing this character. I wasn’t exactly sure, at first, who he was. Because he seems very normal to begin with, and then slowly becomes more creepy and ominous. I wasn’t sure exactly how to put that into play. However, that also goes into my favorite part of the character, where I’m just creepy the entire time. I have a lot of fun being intimidating, kind of looming even though I’m shorter than most of the other people in the cast.
KT: How do you play frightening and intimidating if you are not the most physically intimidating person in the room?
MK: A lot of the work I do is with my eyes and my neck, and so I’m very physical in the way that I’m not. There’s a lot of just staring, and it’s very much in the widening of the eyes and the twisting of the neck. A lot of nuance, a lot of variance.
I also asked Loriann Schmidt to weigh in. She serves as both the program director for KHC and the director for Lovecrafted.
Keizertimes: How did you become acquainted with this playwright? And how did you get your hands on this script before absolutely anyone else?
LORIANN SCHMIDT: Actually, we met Laramie (Dean) through a mutual friend who went to college with him. A lot of times, people write for adults, but not for young adults. Or they write for kids, but not for young adults. That young adult age range is so hard to find good plays for because you don’t want them playing roles that are outside of their ken, but you also don’t want them playing little kid roles. Finding a really good young adult playwright is really hard to do. I was very glad to be introduced. Keizer Homegrown Conservatory actually commissioned this particular work after we performed Finding Jo March. I told (Laramie Dean) that we wanted some horror, and I knew that we had a mutual love of Lovecraft, and so that’s how it began.
KT: What are your hopes for Keizer Homegrown Conservatory in the future? It feels like we’ve already watched this program grow from a single show into something that is well-attended and well-thought of.
LS: I’m hoping that we get more kids involved, especially in the tech area. I hope that we can be an alternative to the little kid theatre camps. I want to make sure that young adults have opportunities to do similar work but at their level, at that pre-professional level.
KT: If you could briefly pitch Lovecrafted to a prospective audience, what would you say to get them to come and see it?
LS: It’s a fantastic horror piece, with very little blood. Some pretty horrifying soundscapes, maybe, but the horror lies more with the monstrous concepts in the script and not with any kind of gore or shock value.
I left the theater feeling like I’d just discovered something marvelous. These kinds of arts programs are as rare as they are valuable. The opportunity to see something off the beaten path, something acutely and inarguably relevant, is an opportunity worth taking. Screams continue to echo from the KHT stage as rehearsals press on. Lovecrafted opens on Aug. 23 and runs until Aug. 31.
(Maeve Z. O’Connor is a New York-based playwright. Her plays have been performed at Keizer Homegrown Theatre.)
