Auditioning for a show is a famously frightening proposition; lots of aspiring actors find it scary.
But fear is the whole point of trying out for a job at Elitch Gardens’ annual Fright Fest.
The auditions begin like any other: Do you have any experience? Why are you interested in this job?
Then it starts getting weird: What’s your favorite horror movie? Who’s your favorite movie monster? Could you give us your impression of him? How about an impression of a werewolf?
And then: Give us your best scream.
Getting hired as one of the 60-or- so cast members of the month-long horror show is not a task for the meek.
“We get people who come here and just don’t scare us,” said Travis Lamb, one of the haunted house designers.
“They lock up, or they tell us they don’t know what to do. Probably three or four people audition for every actor we hire.”
And the hires aren’t necessarily actors with traditional credentials. Lamb says he’s turned down actors that Denver’s conventional theater audiences would recognize. Instead, he looks for what he calls “the predators, the people who go for the scare.”
Like Jimmy Adamson, a seven-year Fright Fest veteran who is lean as a bullwhip, his skin webbed with tattoos. Unadorned, he is intimidating. In makeup, he is menacing. Leaping from an overhead platform at a clutch of apprehensive teenagers, he provokes some of the loudest screams in the house.
During Fright Fest, Adamson is employed “on the bungee,” in backstage parlance. Tethered to a bungee cord, he crouches on a high platform, waiting for the next gaggle of visitors to make their way into a dark hall. There will be something distracting at knee level, perhaps some gravestones or a thoughtfully placed corpse or two, to arrest the visitor’s attention. Then Adamson pounces.
“It’s misdirection,” explained Seth Charbonneau, another Fright Fest designer. “They’re expecting the scare to come from below, so when it comes from above, it works really well. But you have to have good timing — do the scare before anyone starts looking around.”
Occasionally, Adamson leaves his perch to swing over to the cage room, adding extra value to the scare that the resident madman provides there. He is what Charbonneau describes as “extremely physical,” scrambling up and down, hurtling himself through the air like a monkey.
Not all members of the cast are required to perform gymnastics. Some scares rely more on bits of stagecraft, like Hook’s Cabinet, a spring-loaded door that pops open like an awful Jack-in-the-box, spilling an explosion of cans, jars and weird stuff that threatens to hail down upon passers-by. (The contents are tethered for easy retrieval to await the next group.)
And not all members of the cast are required to be scary. There is Gary Stefanski, a rangy, pliant-faced man who has spent nearly every one of his 11 Fright Fests as a clown.
“We tried to make him into something that was not a clown,” Lamb said. “We kept trying to take the clown out of Gary, but you can’t. Somehow, the clown always comes through. Finally, we decided it was in there. So he’s a clown. Gary is a scare-and-feel-good entertainment.”
During Fright Fest, Stefanski works the midway, ambling down the pavement in a rainbow-colored fright wig, an overcoat stained with drips of what might be blood, and peppermint-striped pants. The scariest aspect of his character are the jokes he tells.
“Two cannibals are eating a clown. One says to the other cannibal: ‘Does this taste funny to you?’ ” Stefanski’s version of groaners goes over equally well with the daytime Fright Fest crowd, which skews toward children and parents, and the evening crowd, which is heavy on adolescent and 20-something couples.
It takes a little over an hour to make up the 60 Fright Fest cast members. The process is executed in the style of an assembly line, with various makeup artists wielding airbrushes, white cosmetic wedges, ready-made scars from commercial kits, latex head pieces, a palette of purples, greens and yellows to evoke bruises and decay, and a stash of raw materials to create customized wounds and scars. Sawdust, cotton swabs and scar wax work especially well, Charbonneau says.
“Being in this cast means hours of long, hard, hot, tiresome work,” Lamb warns prospective cast members.
“You’re stuck in the dark for hours on end. And most of our people would do it for free. For fun.”
Bob Parks, who will be joining his first Fright Fest next month, perked up at Lamb’s comment.
“You mean, we get paid for this?” he asked.
Claire Martin: 303-954-1477, cmartin@denverpost.com
How to be a BFF — best fiend forever
Here’s what you need to be a very good ghoul next month:
Spirit gum, spirit gum remover, rubbing alcohol, liquid latex makeup, several kinds of fake blood, a makeup sealer like Final Seal, soft makeup sponges, nose and scar wax, sawdust, cotton swabs, hair spray, Vaseline and excellent, enthusiastic vocal projection.
Being a fiend requires consummate commitment. A tentative approach won’t work.
“elitch gardens’ fright fest”
Haunted house. Elitch Gardens’ annual event is designed as “family by day, fright by night,” with daylight hours leaning toward trick-or-treat fun and evenings geared for teens and adults. Saturday through Oct. 31. Families: noon to 5 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays; “Fright” seekers: 5 to 10 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday; gate admission ($40.99) includes rides and midway Halloween attractions; there’s an additional $6 fee each for the two haunted houses, or $10 for both;
