Deadly DrIvE-in Playwriting

Deadly Drive-In Playwriting Hannah S. & Christian E.

Check out our video blogs (vlogs) reflecting on the process to production: Our Crew Flipgrid

Documents (These contain more detailed insight into the work seen here) -

- Story - Character First Blush - Confirmed Characters - Order - Character Locations

History of TST Halloween Trick-or-tricking extravaganza has been in play for some while at the Tractor Shed Theatre (TST).Usually the TST entertains thousands of trick or-treaters in NW Hickory in Mrs. Rice’s front yard. Their version of Nightmare Before Christmas even went viral! Their themes are created by each cast of fall play production. You can see more about their amazing past shows here. However, this year during a pandemic we took a safer angle and decided to do the show at SSHS for the first time ever! The audience would be targeting middle and high school students so we could amp up the scare.Through our creative brainstorming, we devised a perfect plan! Slashers and classic horror movies were in our sight. But first our others ideas that didn’t make it into play: horror games/apps characters like granny, hello neighbor, etc.; scary SCP using the parking lot as a holding cell; or enacted ghost stories at our new outdoor venue- Shooting Stars. Eventually, we created the drive-through or haunted drive-through but to keep folks safe, we switched to a Drive-in.

Main Story For our drive-In concept, we had to choose our favorite horror movie characters. We picked classic slashers.Our drive-in concept led the way to building our storyboard for film and the “haunting”. Our film included the movie trailer for each character and after their trailer was played the character’s theme song would come on which cued them to

enter into the parking lot to scare the audience in their cars. We wanted a haunted house jump-scare vibe. We had to think up an order that the actors could take that they could memorize and possibly build off of. Things like fog and decoy cars(which is an interaction we used) would put people in the audience on edge because then they couldn’t trust the cars around them and they couldn’t see so much through to what was coming next. We wanted more than a scare but an interactive experience. We brainstormed ideas that led us to using props that we could throw into cars along with candy.

Order introduction(intermission creepy video) Blackout Fog Lights Film(2 minutes) theme Character We also had to account for how much space we were going to use in our performance and how many cars we could fit in that space without going over 79 car spaces- column 17 down to the second to last row 198 We also had to decide where our characters would be coming from and while we did not actually use this list it could be of some use to others who read prior to our performance for ideas for their own show 2 from shooting stars (Hannibal +Scream) 1 green house(norman) 4 from trucks (michael + Jason and Pennywise w/ Georgie) 2 from entrance (Jig and Pig)(Ramp close to cafeteria) 2 from lunch area (annabelle + chuckie) 2 jump fence (jeepers creepers + Freddy….?)-if freddy isn’t able to jump the fence (micheal or chuckie)

Order When we were deciding order we had thought up many different iterations of when the characters would come out and scare people, we had started with going off of the level of scare a character could bring and dispersing them throughout the the show to keep people on their toes, This happened consistently until we were reminded that a possibility could be the order at which the movie came out and so our decision of the Drive-In was decided.You can see our thought process on order in detailed documents on table of contents. However we went with characters in order of movie production date from most modern to oldest.

Final Order Decision Pennywise(Georgie)- Ballons Jig + Pig-Creepy Cloth Annabelle-Blood Tea lights Jeepers Creepers-Body parts Scream-Powder Chucky-Silly String, Powder Pinhead-Glow Bugs Freddy -Bugs Sam-BUg, tea lights Jason-Snakes Micheal Myers-Blood Leather Face-Body parts Norman Bates-BLood

Character interactions For our drive-In we had to think up ways to scare people in ways they couldn’t think they could be scared, such as people from the crowd they are in coming out to get them, or a prop hiding in one of the cars that are parked around them. Thus we had to think of things to heighten the scare factor of the show. Below is the said list of items we could come up with:) -

Red Powder Balloons, Helium Blood related Items glow in the dark bugs bugs

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candy sheets body parts red tea lights Silly string Bomb bags Tie balloons on cars

Pennywise ....Evan - Balloons, Bomb bags Jason...Johnathan - Snakes Michael Myers...Hannah - Blood Items Freddy Krueger...Isaiah - Bugs Annabelle...Taylor - Blood Items, Tea Lights Leather Face...Emmalea - Body Parts Pig Mask(saw)...Jordan - Creepy Cloth Scream ...Ash - Powder Chuckie...Melly - Silly String, Powder Pinhead...Lillie - Glow Bugs Norman Bates...Christian - Blood items Jeepers Creepers...Cory - Body Parts Sam... Jayla - Candy, Pumpkin Jigsaw...Caitlyn - Creepy Cloth

Finalized Decisions

(Things we had decided we’re final for our performance) -

Characters in the show Character Roles character Order All Interactions for characters Parking Prop Stations

The show was highly successful. Audience members young and old enjoyed a good scare from the safety of their cars. We think we will make this show our new tradition.