Victorian London, 1889. The famously named and recently perfected live  illusion known as Pepper’s Ghost has given rise to an incredibly popular and strange type of live entertainment: Phantasmagoria. Stage actors, lighting tricks, mirrored illusions and new technology such as the “Ghost Glide”(a pulley system wherein an actor is pulled up and forward through the stage floor in one smooth gesture) have brought this ghostly presentation from France to England, where it has become unbelievably popular. These “ghost lantern” show’s only aim was to surprise, terrify, and amaze an audience full of people ready to suspend their disbelief and get lost in a world of the existential and supernatural.(Nakane, Y. (2016)) And throughout the end of the 18th century it became the single most popular form of entertainment for the general public. In truth this wasn’t surprising, as looking back through history, from the atmospheric “Temple Magic” of ancient greek melodrama to Shakespeare’s hugely popular inclusion of ghosts in many of his most famous works, the macabre has always drawn crowds, regardless of demographic, simply due to human curiosity. (Theatrical effects: Devices (2016))(Teach Shakespeare. (2017))
	And it hasn’t slowed down either. As soon as the media of film became reliable enough there were quite literally immediate attempts at moving these subjects from stage to screen. Among the first films were adaptations of the story of Jekyll and Hyde, as well as original concepts such as the pantomime-esc Le Manoir du Diable. (Burton, N. (2022))(Jones, J. (2015)) Full length silent film followed via the still widely applauded classic Nosferatu, who’s tumultuous history and less than moral use of copyrighted material has become something of an urban legend to modern horror fans.(Wilson, K. (2020) Of course, Universal's classic monsters need no introduction, with Dracula and The Bride of Frankenstein already showing the genre’s unique tendency to explore taboo subjects like female sexuality, discrimination, wealth disparagement, and xenophobia as early as 1931. And of course, the modern genre needs no introduction, remaining incredibly popular and, potentially more importantly for the industry, financially gainful to this day.( Sullivan, K. (2021)
	The question I am choosing to ask however is as follows: why has the genre’s roots been all near forgotten? With the popularity of horror films and a vast wealth of technological achievements in live stagecraft happening side by side through the past century, why have the two seemed to become mutually exclusive? It’s been proven decade after decade that the genre is hugely lucrative financially so even in our modern, business minded industry, there should logistically still be a place for it. And yet horror themed theater is incredibly rare.. Although some of the classical gothic canon has remained a staple such as Frakenstein, there is a pitiful amount of frequently staged works within the horror genre, let alone works that are original concepts or written within the last few decades.(Billington, M. (2011) It seems the current industry has made it clear that there isn’t a place for horror within it and as any theater minded horror buff will tell you, that is a terrible shame.(Nyman, A. (2014) I truly believe that we as both a theater going audience as well as budding industry professionals are losing out on the opportunity to produce deeply effective works because of this strange fear of taking on the horror genre live. 
	In the words of Sarah Fornace, founder and creative director of Boston based theater company Manual Cinema, “It’s like Romance isn’t it? No one admits to reading Romance but it’s still one of the richest industries in the world because everyone reads it. It’s the same for horror I think.” Horror has always been in a unique position to tackle taboo and disturbing subjects without fear of ostracisation as the genre already knows it’s place as an often critically sneered at creative style. Hence why so many older films feel so current. George Romero's classic zombie movie Night of the Living Dead was able to show a shocking and disturbing representation of violent white supremest groups unparalleled by other films of the time, whether intentional or not, because of it’s gorey, apocalyptic framing.(Harper, S. (2017) 1999’s teen werewolf thriller Ginger Snaps took the expectation of a fun campy monster film and created a deeply cathartic commentary about feminine rage and the societal guilt those who go through female puberty often feel towards their own bodies.(Brehmer, N. (2018) These themes; these unapologetic, humanist ideas are so often celebrated within dramatic theater as brave, powerful, and impactful and I very much believe that if the industry were to embrace the horror genre, it could do the same in a way we haven’t seen done widely before. And if the technology of the Classical Age could use the hallways of an amphitheater to whisper in an audience members ear or project shadows just faint enough for the back row to doubt the front row’s perception of the story, modern companies are more than capable of doing the same within whatever budget they may be working with because simply put, audiences come to the theater because they want to believe.(Woltmann, S. (2022) In the story, in the characters, in the urgency of their fictional situation, and in the case of horror, the danger. 
           Theater groups already have a unique leg up in producing horror in that the theater itself is a place of ambience. It is meant to be controlled and formed by a company, and even by itself is meant to garner enough respect from the audience to allow them to float away from the world outside and sink into the one in front of them. While film has to spend millions if they seek to portray a certain color palette or motif, theater makers are used to doing this on a shoestring budget, and stylizing things in a way that simply wouldn’t read for a camera audience.(Déchery, C. and Wellington, M. (2020) And, as I’ve mentioned previously, theater makers have a rich, recorded history of live horror performance to learn from and to build on. 
	In terms of groups bringing these concepts to fruition, one of the most acclaimed is  the above mentioned company Manual Cinema based in Chicago USA. Through the use of lighting, projections, shadow puppetry, and live film the company creates essentially a hybrid between a silent film, a puppet show, and a live stage show by presenting the “finished” piece as a film on a large projection above the stage. Meanwhile on the stage itself, the actors, puppeteers, musicians, and camera operators are in full view, creating each shot of the “film” in real time in front of a live audience who both get to watch a piece of stylized cinema as well as the performances it takes to create it right in front of them.(Manual Cinema Website (2023) The group, coincidentally, is also typically known by their most popular and longest running performance, Frankenstein. Called “an explicitly stylized self-contained reality” by The New York Times (Soloski, 2018), the show since its 2018 debut in Chicago has gone on to tour internationally to this day and continues to garner praise by critics for it’s “endlessly imaginative” (Fishman,2019)  gothic atmosphere and visuals. Needless to say that in the relatively small-scale world of horror theater, Manual Cinema has “created a whole new artform” (Sullivan, 2019), and has largely used the horror genre to do it.
 As such when exploring the practicalities of bringing such material to the stage I was deeply interested in focusing in on the company’s use of multimedia and puppetry to not only overcome the logistical needs of the subject matter, such as creating monsters in a believable way, but use it to innovate within the industry to such a degree that they truly introduce a “new artform” and in many ways a sort of blueprint for a new type of live entertainment. Inspired by their work within the genre, I decided that it would be necessary to experiment with techniques they implement  to begin to find both how this equipment can be used to aid horror themed storytelling in other ways, as well as help develop my own approaches. To begin I gained access to a top down projector, which is the basis of any kind of shadow puppetry. The projector itself is an older more manual version of our modern video projector, wherein the light from the bulb shines down onto a reflective flat surface, then is reflected back through a series of mirrors and reflectors to be shown on a large flat surface. (Austin, 2015) Due to its inclusion of a light source that can simply shine with an image projected through it or not, these types of projectors are extremely useful to shadow puppeteers for a few reasons. For one, the flat surface allows for exact and steady movements as the puppets are able to to simply be laid on the surface and moved precisely with clear material attached to each part, without having to worry about keeping the puppet perfectly still and the correct distance away from the show screen to give a crisp picture. Another, and one that I have very quickly found the most advantageous in my own creative process, is the ability to pair an illustrated background with a live actor. By adding an extra light source to light more of the screen creators have found that you can create layed visuals with the background laying flat on the projector’s table and still place an actor in front of it. This can simply give the appearance of a cinematic location of your chosen style behind the actor but this can also, with proper blocking, allow an actor to “interact” with large set pieces, puppets, and props by positioning themselves in front of the projected item or character and motion as if they were on the same plane. This trick in particular is something that is used often by Manual Cinema as a way to bring in cinematic set pieces, such as the iconic moments of Victor Frankenstein opening up the roof to his laboratory or his creature coming alive within a raging storm completely possible to portray simply and effectively without the need for an expensive or challenging to construct set. (trailer) It’s ingenuity like this with which I believe even the most logistically complex aspects of horror could be portrayed on a less than massive budget.
The illustrative potential of handmade projections I believe, have a clear link to the gothic and romantic subgenres. These classic stories of “power, confinement, and isolation” (ill) following characters driven by pure emotional intensity are often accompanied by a dark and delicate art style indicative of the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century. These illustrations are typically done in black ink (though if color is included it is muted and only serves to better envision the appearance of the characters) and range from ghostly and feminine to disturbing and graphic. However, due to the prevalence of shadow and hard, intricate line work, the style traditionally used to present the subgenre is a perfect fit for shadow puppetry and as such I focused my efforts on adapting an early, little known Edgar Allen Poe story called Ligeia. Ligeia is the story of a troubled widower who is obsessed to the point of madness with his mysterious and strange late wife Ligeia. The man remarries, only to have his new wife whom he despises fall ill just like the first, only to believe her dead body has transformed into that of Ligeia. 
In beginning to plan how to portray the story I first, on the advice of Sarah Fornace, specified what visuals and audio would do the story justice as opposed to beginning with a set list of equipment I would make myself use. After experimenting with the projector I had sourced I I began using film style storyboards to develop a possible visual language for the piece. As the life of our narrator is completely consumed by the opium-faded memory of this woman, I began working with the idea that the character of Ligeia would not be portrayed as a person but instead almost as a goddess from Roman or Greek mythology to truly get across the idea that what's left of her has been twisted into something so godlike that no version of the person she could have been would ever possibly measure up to the borderline deity he has created in her image. As such, I developed the idea of ending each scene with a highly detailed, illustrative projection of Ligeia to evoke the idea of a painting or statue, and limit live shadow acted versions of her to very few appearances before her death. The concept of subliminals also began, as a way to, even in scenes where she wasn’t seen, Ligeia would still be there. This would include a woman's breathing and laughter faded into the strings centered music that would accompany it, as well as working in her shape into scenic backgrounds, or even the frame of the screen, technically outside the bounds of the story. Meanwhile the character of Rowena, the narrator’s new wife, would only appear in the form of a live actor, as she is the antithesis to his willful delusions; reality.  
`In beginning to take the first steps into staging such a piece, I did start to realize however, that there were quite a few logistical challenges in terms of using such techniques, the first of which beginning with the projector itself. The one I was able to source was surprisingly portable, only consisting of the surface and head. In the older, likely more recognizable overhead projectors used in education up until the early 2000’s, the key piece of technology used, known as a Fresnel Lenses, sat at the top of a lightbox of sorts, with a light source at the bottom of the box shining up through it. (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2023)  These types of curved lenses are paired one on top of the other in order to refract and direct any light shown through it in a cone shape upwards to a fine enough point for it to hit the mirror of the projector and result in an adjustable, clear image without said image being mirrored or distorted.( Duran-Ramirez, V.M. and Malacara-Doblado, D.,2004) The projector I was able to work with forgoes this efficient but cumbersome method by utilizing a thinner mirrored workspace with all the aspects of the Fresnel Lenses built into its surface, omitting the bulky staging area previously needed to direct the light. This did allow for much greater ease of use as I was, at least initially, largely testing images in the confined space of my university dorm room, but it also posed the problem of adapting the instructions from other maker’s that I had received to fit a model that they personally didn't use. Most noticeably, this made it so it was extremely easy to see any damage that the surface had sustained prior to my acquiring it, as smudges, scratches, and dust were directly on the surface used for the refraction of the light, as opposed to being located separately, away from it. Another issue that arose was the surface was not conducive to a film style screen shape as the surface itself was too square, leaving not enough space horizontally to frame shots the way I had imagined. This meant I needed to rework virtually all of my storyboarding as important parts of the background would be cut off, the subject would be too small, and there would be a large amount of dead space if I tried to tape off a frame within the space I had. 
Another challenge, albeit a much more expected one, is simply the challenges that come from attempting to orchestrate a group of people on a project that requires more than just one body to fulfill all the needed roles. While the cast of a shadow puppetry performance is typically small as all actors and puppet performers can be made to look like many completely different characters very easily when all you see is their silhouette, the operation still requires one person to change backgrounds, one to four people to man any puppets on the projector surface alongside it, someone manning music and sound, a lighting technician, and an infinite number of other show specific jobs as there are many effects/techniques still being developed within the modern rise of shadow puppetry. While at the beginning of gauging interest in this project I had an unexpectedly large number of acting and Design and Production students who were interested in contributing their skills and helping me run the performance, most of these individuals ended up having to step away to prioritize other projects before any true production could begin. And so, for this present moment in time at least, I decided to transition this portion of the project from a short performance to a collection of photos of my planned adaptation of Ligeia, to serve as a proof of concept in regards to the techniques I am continuing to learn. Taking a page again from Fornace and her colleagues’ concept of “cinematic shadow puppetry”, I focused my efforts on creating faux “screenshots” of the planned frames from Ligeia. These were aimed at encompassing all aspects of my proposed concept. This includes full screen slides, gothic and macabre imagery, and a live narrator in front of the screen itself. This, along with the newly reworked framing in mind, is how I hope to still portray a portion of the potential I see within both the genre and the medium. 
That being said, I did still follow the Manual Cinema’s Maker’s Guide to prepare the projector, even if I was not going to be going seamlessly from shot to shot just yet. For one, I fashioned a wide piece of cardstock and cardboard to be attached to the mirror on the head of the projector. This, albeit strange looking addition is used to “cut” from scene to scene by simply lowering it over the mirror at the end of a scene or shot and lifting it when you begin a new one. To aid in a smooth cut to black I lengthened the shutter quite a bit longer than recommended, as once made long enough and curved towards the projector slightly, I found I could achieve a much more even fade since when modified like this, the board made an almost straight line from the top of the screen to the bottom. Attempts were made to have cuts to and from a few available directions in an effort to add visual interest but eventually it was decided that a single, clean cut that was easy to man would make the best visual, as well as be the most reliable. Another trick was, as mentioned above, to tape out your space on the projector surface itself. Most top down projectors do not project a perfect rectangle or square. Instead. the screen either curves or cuts in at the corner, making an eight sided shape. (Floyer, C.,2006) To get around this, Fornace recommends using wall safe masking tape around the edges to create a cleaner and easier to work with shape. One can also incorporate cardstock to achieve a more widescreen, cinematic look but as mentioned above, that would have made the overlays on my particular projector quite small, therefore making them difficult to make and easy to tear in use.