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1. After Dark Interviews

This week it's the Turn of ETCETERA THEATRE

2. Reviews

The review are coming in!

3. Behind the Scenes

BEHIND THE SCREAMS

How do you scare an audience with one performer?

THE PEOPLE BEHIND THE FEAR

Three horror makers on how fear actually works

4. Audience Awards cast your votes!

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Horror may have its monsters, ghosts and things that go bump in the night, but running a horror festival involves rather more practical concerns: programming shows, supporting artists, selling tickets and, occasionally, working out how to clear fake blood, body parts and sets in the five minutes before the next show begins.

For London Pub Theatres’ Horror Season, After Dark goes behind the scenes of the festivals giving horror theatre a home. We begin at the 42-seat Etcetera Theatre, where organisers Otto and Martyn are preparing for Camden Horror Fest.

NOWHERE TO HIDE

Camden Horror Fest began with a simple observation: horror already seemed to belong at the Etcetera.

A small black box above a pub already possesses an underground ambience. Add darkness, an audience sitting within a few feet of the performers and a genre built around making people wonder what might be lurking just beyond their line of sight, and the room begins to feel less like a limitation and more like an invitation.

For Otto and Martyn, that closeness was part of the initial appeal.

“Horror works brilliantly here because the audience is close to the performers, there is nowhere to hide, and every sound, silence and movement becomes part of the atmosphere.”

But the ambition was broader than finding a good room for ghost stories. They also saw a gap for a London theatre festival able to accommodate horror in all its forms.

“Horror is such a flexible genre. It can be frightening, funny, political, surreal, emotional, or completely strange.”

Camden Horror Fest was created to give those different kinds of work a home.

HORROR, BUT NOT AS YOU KNOW IT

It’s not just about the number of times it can make somebody leap out of their seat. Otto and Martyn look for atmosphere, a strong theatrical idea and, crucially, a sense that something is at stake. That leaves the door open to everything from slashers and ghost stories to folk horror, body horror, gothic monologues, psychological work and dark comedy.

Two productions in this year’s programme illustrate just how broad that definition can be.

They’re very different propositions, but that is rather the point - horror doesn’t have to mean ghosts in a creepy mansion or someone hiding behind a door. Sometimes the thing frightening us is much more mundane and recognisable.

What matters is that the work feels alive on stage. Otto and Martyn are interested in artists who treat the practical restrictions of fringe theatre not as obstacles but as part of the creative language of the production.

“We like work that feels bold, committed and specific.”

HORROR UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL



Film can tightly control what we see. The camera directs our eye, editing decides when information is revealed and a well-timed soundtrack tells us when we should start worrying.

Theatre has something unique.

Presence.

“Live theatre makes horror immediate,” Otto and Martyn explain. “The audience can hear the actor breathing. They can feel the silence before something happens.”

Ordinary objects can become sinister. “A chair in the wrong place, a blackout, a whisper, someone standing too still, a door that should not open.”

None of this requires a huge budget. “Sometimes the audience’s imagination does most of the damage.”

At the Etcetera, small choices can carry enormous weight: a movement can feel menacing, a quiet line threatening, a glance enough to implicate an audience member.

“In a larger venue, horror can become spectacle. In a small venue, it becomes personal.”

The flexibility of the room also matters.

“It can become a bedroom, a basement, a séance room, a memory, a nightmare, or something much stranger.”

The horror doesn’t have to overwhelm the room - it only needs to get under your skin.

I can attest to this. The Etcetera’s relationship with horror predates Camden Horror Fest. The venue was once home to the London Horror Festival, where I first encountered live horror theatre. One production, inspired by the circumstances surrounding Mary Shelley’s writing of Frankenstein, still haunts me. The company transformed the tiny black box into a mad scientist’s laboratory, with the creature coming to life mere inches from me amid crackling circuitry, sparks, smoke and flashing lights. That proximity created a tension I’d never experienced while watching horror on screen. It felt as though I could reach out and touch it - or rather, that it could reach out and touch me.

It was genuinely terrifying.

WHAT DOES THE CAMDEN HORROR AUDIENCE WANT?

Being scared is the obvious answer, but Otto and Martyn see it more broadly. “I think audiences want to feel something strongly.”

That could be fear, tension, shock, laughter, discomfort, curiosity or sadness. Horror audiences don’t necessarily need to be terrified every second, but they do want a production to commit to its world.

“The best shows understand the rhythm between dread, release, surprise and atmosphere.”

That breadth also creates a particular challenge when it comes to programming the festival.

As Otto and Martyn explain: “Horror can mean so many things to different artists. Some companies come with very traditional ghost stories, others bring comedy, experimental performance, psychological work, physical theatre, or something closer to cabaret or live art. The challenge is to make space for that variety while still making the festival feel like a clear event with its own identity.”

For Otto and Martyn, the reward is seeing what artists do with the space. “There is something very satisfying about watching a small room transform completely because a company understands atmosphere, timing and audience imagination.”

There is a larger ambition behind it too: making space for a genre they feel can be underestimated. “Horror has always been deeply theatrical, and it deserves to be taken seriously as live performance.”

BRINGING A HORROR SHOW TO CAMDEN

For companies arriving at the festival for the first time, Otto and Martyn’s advice is straightforward: “Be clear about what experience you want the audience to have.”

In an intimate space, every choice matters. As they point out, that includes “the sound, the lighting, the pace, the first image, the final moment, how the audience enters the room, even what they see before the show starts”.

They also stress the importance of being specific about what you’re offering. “Don’t just say ‘horror show.’ Tell audiences what kind of horror it is. Is it gothic? Funny? Psychological? Supernatural? Bloody? Queer? Historical? Experimental?”

Horror audiences know there are many sub-genres. Telling them which particular nightmare you are offering makes it easier for them to find you.

And a festival appearance need not be simply another performance slot. Otto and Martyn encourage companies to invite reviewers, gather images and audience responses, meet other artists and think about the show’s future beyond Camden.

BLOOD, GORE AND TUESDAY ADMIN

Naturally, running a horror festival also comes with administrative questions not faced by every arts organiser. As Otto and Martyn put it: “One of the strangest parts of running a horror festival is how quickly the unusual becomes normal. You find yourself having very practical conversations about blood, screams, props, bodies, ghosts, knives, coffins, rituals, fake wounds, unusual liquids, and whether something can be safely cleaned before the next show.”

“In another context that would seem completely unhinged,” they admit.

At Camden Horror Fest?

“It’s just Tuesday admin.”

And then there are the clichés.

Asked which horror trope should be allowed a well-earned rest, they nominate the “it was all a dream” ending, particularly when it removes the consequences of everything that came before. There is, however, apparently some room for negotiation if it is “done with a very sharp knife”.

Another staple may also have had its moment.

“Not every creepy child needs to sing slowly in the dark. The creepy child union has had a very strong run.”

THE FUTURE

Otto and Martyn want Camden Horror Fest to grow into a proper annual platform for the genre: somewhere companies, writers, comedians, solo performers and experimental theatre-makers can bring ambitious work to an audience actively looking for it.

They hope to develop greater press and industry involvement, audience awards, late-night events and stronger links between participating artists.

Ultimately, the aim is as much about identity as expansion. They want Camden Horror Fest to become part of the theatrical calendar: a festival audiences anticipate, artists seek out and London’s fringe scene recognises as a home for horror.

There is something pleasingly appropriate about that ambition. Horror has always been good at taking an ordinary place - a house, a hotel, a tent, a lake - and making it feel as though something extraordinary might happen there. Camden Horror Fest is attempting much the same thing with a black box theatre above a pub.

Although perhaps not with a creepy child singing slowly in the dark.

3. BEHIND THE SCENES

BEHIND THE SCREAMS: How do you scare an audience with one performer

When there is nobody else on stage, where does the threat come from? We talk to solo horror-makers about invisible antagonists, unpredictable audiences, contorted bodies and why one performer is more than enough.

A performer walks onstage alone. There are no other actors to react, interrupt or take over while a behind-the-scenes trick is prepared. For horror, that presents an obvious problem. Fear thrives on anticipation. On the suspicion that somebody - or something - might be just out of sight. So what happens when the audience knows there’s only one person up there?

For writer-performer Polis Loizou, whose solo work includes YOU OUGHTA BE IN PICTURES and I WAS A TEENAGE BISEXUAL, it undoubtedly makes the job tougher.

In YOU OUGHTA BE IN PICTURES, Polis turns to 1940s Hollywood, playing a notorious film director auditioning a young actor for a horror film whose previous lead mysteriously died, gradually drawing him into a world of exploitation.

“It’s just harder to build and sustain that necessary tension,” he says. “You don’t have anyone to bounce off, and threat doesn’t feel as immediate.”

Harder, though, does not mean less effective. In I WAS A TEENAGE BISEXUAL, Polis plays roughly twenty characters and, at one point, has to fight himself.

Alice Mayer, writer-performer of HOURGLASS, takes a different approach. Rather than playing the other characters herself, she performs opposite a cast of disembodied voices.

HOURGLASS follows Charlie, a young woman whose exes keep dying and who begins to find power in a curse that may make her considerably more dangerous than she first appears.

“The only thing you get to rely on is the strength of your own storytelling,” Alice says.

Perhaps the first rule of solo horror, then, is not to apologise for there being only one person on stage. It’s to make that person feel like an entire cast.

THE UNSEEN MONSTER

Horror doesn’t need to put the monster in front of us.

Polis prefers to let the audience complete the picture themselves. Subtle changes in physicality or vocal inflection can suggest an unseen presence. In YOU OUGHTA BE IN PICTURES, the idea is complicated further: his protagonist is the threat to somebody the audience cannot see.

In HOURGLASS, the uncertainty lies partly in Charlie herself. She may be an unreliable narrator.

“Your audience’s mind is your greatest tool, especially in solo theatre,” Alice says. “Is she this sweet girl who has bad things happen to her, or is she a mass murderer? That decision is in the audience’s hands.”

For writer-performer Mimi Thompson and director Nathalee Avery, creators of THE HAUNTING, the threat comes from somewhere different. Thompson plays Mimi, who is being haunted by her period. Every month she receives instructions sealed in blood which she must obey in order to stop the bleeding; when the demands escalate to kissing her best friend’s boyfriend, the one-hour solo horror-comedy follows the repercussions of this decision.

Rather than drawing out the anticipation, they keep the show deliberately fast-paced. Mimi is constantly moving, with props and costumes appearing throughout.

“Since they can’t predict the next thing to happen to her, the possibility suddenly emerges that a threat might suddenly leap out from a curtain, from the audience, from behind Mimi,” they explain. “The possibility becomes the antagonist.”

That may be one of solo horror’s great advantages. Remove the visible threat and almost anything can occupy the empty space - a prop becomes suspicious, a dark corner becomes inhabited, silence becomes menacing.

Polis is emphatic about the value of withholding information: “Don’t show everything and never over-explain. Uncertainty is one of the key drivers of fear.”

THE HAUNTING similarly asks its audience to contribute imaginatively. Mimi narrates much of the story and frequently uses mime, turning the limitations of a small-scale fringe production into part of the theatrical language. Thompson and Avery describe it as a challenge to the audience: can a solo performer on a minimal set persuade you to enter this world and be frightened by it?

Horror has always understood this principle well. Show us the monster and we can assess it. Leave the door closed and we can invent something far worse.

HOW MUCH TECH DO YOU NEED?

There’s no single answer.

Polis has tried both extremes. I WAS A TEENAGE BISEXUAL uses video, sound and changing lighting states to create a cinematic world large enough to hold its many characters. YOU OUGHTA BE IN PICTURES, on the other hand, strips almost everything away: Polis, a chair, a fake glass tumbler and one lighting state.

In that piece, it’s precisely the sparseness - and the acknowledgement of theatrical falseness - that makes the experience uncomfortable.

HOURGLASS is at the other end of the scale. Alice performs against a single 45-minute track, interacting with pre-recorded actors as though they are in the room with her. Different sound states, music and silence help create the world around Charlie, alongside puppetry, food and, naturally, severed body parts.

Timing is unforgiving.

“If I mess up, the whole show messes up,” Alice says.

Meanwhile, THE HAUNTING also takes a maximalist approach. Props were part of Mimi’s thinking from the start, while sound became another way of populating the space. Multiple voices are absorbed into a soundscape which, in a small theatre, can become almost oppressive.

The lesson seems less about whether solo horror should be technically elaborate or stripped bare than whether the theatrical language belongs to the story.

One performer can occupy a cinematic landscape; another can have little more than a chair.

Both can be frightening.

WHEN THE BODY BECOMES THE SPECIAL EFFECT

Without another actor to redirect our attention, the performer’s body becomes extraordinarily important.

Polis maintains that surprise doesn’t require a new physical element suddenly appearing. A sharp increase in volume, a jump, or even a creeping realisation passing across somebody’s face can be enough to catch an audience off guard.

His multiple characters in I WAS A TEENAGE BISEXUAL are built through specific movements, poses and voices. One town-hall sequence requires him to switch rapidly between ten characters, changes that have become instantaneous through repetition.

Even a small alteration in voice or posture, he argues, can become unsettling.

For THE HAUNTING, physicality is crucial. Towards the end of the show, Mimi’s body itself becomes part of the horror. Thompson took a contemporary dance course while developing the show, exploring the limits and possibilities of her movement.

One key moment has her fold herself into an uncomfortable, contorted position. At first, it looked faintly comic. So she and the director made it last longer. Then she began to move, slowly.

The longer they stretched the moment, the more disturbing it became. Audiences subsequently identified it as one of the show’s most frightening scenes.

Alice also begins HOURGLASS with physical transformation, using a short movement sequence in which Charlie grotesquely stretches into a spider.

She admits that, as an audience member, watching one performer dance can make her uncomfortable. So she uses that discomfort.

“I commit to it and then when the piece snaps to reality, it causes people to laugh and then they’re immediately on your side.”

Sometimes the difference between funny and terrifying is simply refusing to stop.

TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT

Small fringe venues may seem difficult places to hide theatrical tricks, but they’re also particularly well placed to frighten people.

For Alice, that intimacy recalls something much more basic: hearing a frightening story at a sleepover and lying awake afterwards.

“You have to trust audiences to use their own imagination.”

Polis wrote YOU OUGHTA BE IN PICTURES specifically for the Cinema Room at Edinburgh’s Banshee Labyrinth. The intimacy intensifies the claustrophobia and allows an audience to see tiny changes in his face that would disappear in a larger auditorium.

THE HAUNTING similarly uses proximity to its advantage. Its audience is involved throughout, with those closest to the action unable to retreat from what’s happening in front of them.

But proximity also alters the relationship between performer and audience.

A solo actor has no colleague on stage to absorb an unexpected laugh, cough or badly timed reaction.

Mimi draws energy from those responses and sometimes acknowledges an unexpected laugh before returning to the story. Thompson and Avery see that responsiveness as part of building a stronger connection with the room rather than pretending the audience isn’t there.

Alice is equally dependent on the people in front of her.

“My show lives and dies by audience reaction,” she says.

A particularly large laugh or gasp can alter her timing, forcing her to speed up or slow down while still keeping the show locked to its pre-recorded track.

Polis remains aware of the room too, subtly altering his performance around its energy.

The audience may not have lines, but they are the other people in the scene.

ONE PERFORMER, MANY HATS

There is also a less glamorous reality to solo performance - if something needs doing, there’s only one person available to do it.

The ending of THE HAUNTING asks Mimi simultaneously to move props, deliver dialogue, interact with the audience and change costume. Thompson and Avery knew from the beginning that the sequence would be difficult and rehearsed it repeatedly to prevent any practical activity from draining the scene of energy.

DOES IT ACTUALLY WORK?

And then there is the question every horror-maker eventually has to confront: is any of this actually scary?

Alice’s answer is admirably concise.

“You don’t. You hope.”

One encouraging indication so far? Her favourite reaction to one of the show’s scares: “An old woman clutching at her pearls.”

For Polis, development begins with the simplest test: “Do I find this creepy?”

Beyond that, fear is subjective. A moment that unnerves one audience member may leave another completely untouched. His default position, he jokes, is to assume he is boring everybody until they tell him otherwise.

Thompson and Avery brought in an audience early in the process, holding a feedback session after a dress rehearsal. Unexpectedly, most people wanted to participate more.

Rather than shrinking away from the threat, they wanted to move closer to it.

Which perhaps speaks to the strange appeal of horror theatre.

An audience buys a ticket knowing that somebody intends to make them uncomfortable.

Then they walk into a dark room and help them do it.

ALONE, BUT NOT REALLY

A solo performer may not have another actor to bounce off, a visible antagonist or somebody else to help carry the scene, but they’re not really alone.

“I don’t feel alone,” Alice says. “I’m in a room full of people.”

Then there are the lighting and sound design, the set, props and costume. The character created through a change of posture or voice. The thing behind the curtain that never emerges.

And there is a willing audience filling every empty space with possibilities.

Asked what they would need to frighten a room if restricted to one performer, one prop and one lighting state, Thompson and Avery reply: Mimi, a torch and red light.

With the right show, that’s enough.

After all, as Polis puts it: “Feel the fear yourself, and they’ll feel it too.”

END

THE PEOPLE BEHIND THE FEAR: Three horror makers on how fear actually works

What does it actually take to frighten an audience in a theatre? From a carefully placed silence to a 3,000-cue technical system, LPTM Horror Season meets some of the people building fear live. How do you make someone afraid when they’re sitting in a theatre surrounded by other people, perfectly aware that the person apparently having their teeth pulled out a few feet away is an actor?

Everything has to feel immediate - the performer has to sustain the fear, the sound cue has to be perfectly timed, the lighting change has to happen at precisely the right moment. Perhaps that precision is exactly what makes theatrical horror so interesting.

A successful scare belongs to a team: writers, performers, the director, sound, lighting and set designers, technicians - and, ultimately, the audience.

For Horror Season, we spoke to theatre-makers behind three very different fringe productions - THE MAN WHO THOUGHT HE WAS A BABOON (performing at Drayton Arms Theatre, Kensington), MARA (Hen & Chickens Theatre, Islington) and SURVIVE THE NIGHT (The UnDisposables at Old Red Lion Playhouse, Islington) - to find out how the machinery of fear actually works.

STARTING POINT

Somi De Souza, playwright, director and performer of THE MAN WHO THOUGHT HE WAS A BABOON, starts with character. “We have to see them in their normal state before anything has happened,” she explains. If an audience is going to fear for somebody, first they have to care what happens to them. In BABOON, Hugo is living a quiet life with his wife, Summer, when a substantial inheritance changes everything. Drawing on a secret shame from his childhood, Summer and the newly arrived village doctor begin carefully convincing him that he is a baboon.

De Souza describes the play as psychological terror: “a slow removal of boundaries, a dismantling of the character’s sense of reality”. There are no monsters waiting in the wings. The horror comes from watching something recognisable - apparently good intentions curdling into something darker. 

4. AUDIENCE AWARDS FOR HORROR SHOW, CAST YOUR VOTES HERE

We’re putting the decision in your hands. Throughout the festival season, audiences will be able to vote for their favourite productions and moments across all three festivals, including:

Best Death

Best Jump Scare

Best Twist

Most Inventive Use of a Prop

Keep an eye out for the voting link and have your say.

FOLLOW THE HORROR SEASON ON INSTAGRAM @pubtheatres1

New reviews and features will be added throughout October, so check back regularly for the latest coverage. LPTM’s Horror Season is an experimental editorial feature for October 2026, and we’ll see where it takes us … For now, dim the lights.