Play comes to the stage in time for spooky season
Theater performance sophomore Emily Lopez rehearses her role of “Mrs. Dudley” in the first act in the production of “The Haunting of Hill House” last Tuesday at the Albert L. Jeffers Theatre on the Edinburg campus. The play premiered last Friday and will continue through Oct. 29. Ryan Lugo/THE RIDER
“It watches,’ he added suddenly. ‘The house. It watches every move you make.”
This quote, from Shirley Jackson’s 1959 book “The Haunting of Hill House,” embodies the feeling the UTRGV Theatre Department hopes to bring to the stage during its production of the paranormal story.
Reputation precedes Hill House for countless tragedies and its haunted nature.
“Silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone,” the book reads.
The story follows a paranormal researcher who is trying to conduct an investigation into the supernatural occurrences of the house, all while one character begins to be influenced by the house, which ends with tragic results.
The mental state of the main character, Eleanor Vance, who is invited to Hill House by Dr. John Montague, the paranormal researcher, deteriorates throughout the plot and it becomes increasingly unclear to the audience whether the haunting is caused by external forces or Vance’s own psychological distress.
Brian Warren, director of the production and a professor in the Department of Theatre, said in the slow-burning plot, the tension builds until the spine-chilling climax.
“We see through Eleanor, she’s the main character, we see through her eyes what she is seeing,” Warren said.
He said young people who are unsure of the path they are taking might be able to relate to the main character.
“This entity grabs hold of that [vulnerability],” Warren said. “ The entity inside the house, which we’re, kind of, not sure what that is.”
The cast includes Ashley Cantu as Eleanor Vance, Thomas Pearson as Dr. Montague, Emily Lopez as Mrs. Dudley, Chelsea Martinez as Theodora, Scot Johnson as Luke Sanderson, Gina Rodriguez as Mrs. Montague, Justin Vasquez as Arthur Parker, Amparo Villanueva as Crain Child and Mateo Ramirez as the nun.
Miguel Salazar, scenic and lighting designer and an associate professor in the Department of Theatre, described creating an eerie ambience throughout the play and the goal to create a little tension or suspense.
“I’m trying to play with the shadows and try to play with some color to emphasize around the scenes where it gets tensed up,” Salazar said.
The lighting director said the story is one person’s journey into madness.
“She just, kind of, succumbs into herself, and her own thoughts and her own mind,” he said.
Jennifer Saxton, costume designer and an associate professor in the Department of Theatre said the play is a bit different from the novel and Mike Flanagan’s Netflix show, by the same name.
“I got chills the other night,” Saxton said. “When you’re sitting there and, all of a sudden, your arms start to feel like that. There were some chills. … It’s good to go in cold on this one.”
Jocelyn Padron, a visual communication design senior, said she is really looking forward to the play being new territory after having seen the 2018 Netflix adaptation of the book.
“The twist. I was not expecting the end to happen the way it did,” Padron said about the Netflix show’s ending.
Padron said she enjoys thrillers because they keep her on edge and never knows what will happen next.
“I think psychological is way more scarier because it could happen to us, like, in real life, and we don’t think about it normally,” Padron said.
The play premiered last Friday and continues this weekend in the Albert L. Jeffers Theatre on the Edinburg campus.
