In seven years of staging sometimes bloody, sometimes terrifying short plays, only one person has bailed on the Twin Cities Horror Festival — and that was because of a chicken.
It was in 2016, when the Four Humors company performed "Ubu for President." Horror Fest executive director Jason Ballweber thinks the issue was sensory overload. "We brought in a rotisserie chicken, put it on a table and ate it with our hands," said Ballweber, who is also an actor with Four Humors. "Someone walked out to the lobby and asked, 'Is that chicken going to be on stage the whole time?' And the lobby person didn't know, so the person left.
"That's one thing about the festival: You don't just watch it. You hear it. You smell it. You're surrounded by it."
Scares are a dime a dozen at movie multiplexes, but as far as Ballweber can tell, Twin Cities Horror Festival was the world's only festival of plays that terrify, disturb or creep out audiences until Montreal recently launched one. Structured like the Minnesota Fringe Festival, but staged entirely at the Southern Theater, Horror Fest includes 13 plays that run 45 to 60 minutes apiece. Mostly world premieres, each show gets up to five slots during the Oct. 25-Nov. 4 festival.
Ballweber says Horror Fest's founders wanted "to make horror on stage a legitimate form, not just hack-and-slash bloodbaths, which are not an art form. This is about controlling the building of tension and the release of tension."
Audiences seem to be responding. The festival sold 2,800 tickets in 2017, and even the Minnesota Fringe has added a horror category.
"This is the only festival I know of where we have so many repeat customers," Ballweber said. "They'll come to a show where someone will pluck out another character's eyeball and then they'll say, 'I want to come back and see how they did that.' "
If eyeball-plucking is your jam, head toward "Home," probably this year's grisliest show. But, as the lineup indicates, the festival is designed to satisfy many terror palates.
