Get more show with your show when you join us for Play(under)Ground!
It's our slate of free post-show programming with local artists. This week's events include:
- Friday, 9/22: Opening night toast and reception with the cast and crew.
- Sunday, 9/24: Tabletop role-playing adventure with Andrew J. Hungerford. All experience levels welcome, including first-time players! Sign up here to reserve your spot at the table.
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"A Tale of Fatherhood, Loss, and Redemption"
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Catching up with Monsters of the American Cinema director Tamara Winters
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 Q: What first made you excited about this script?
Tamara: The fact that Christian frames this very personal, relatable tale of fatherhood, loss, and redemption around the tropes and images of classic monster movies? That's just like catnip for me. I immediately told Andrew [J. Hungerford, the Know's Artistic Director] that this show needed to be part of our season.
The depth of these characters is so refreshing. There are no stereotypes, here; these are characters you instantly believe could exist just down the street from you; real folks with real-world needs and hurts and desires and fears. And man, the actors we cast (returning friend Andrew Ian Adams and Know MainStage newcomer Grant Zentmeyer) have brought incredible nuance and heart to these characters.
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Click to watch the teaser trailer for Monsters of the American Cinema
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Q: How did you prepare for this show?
Tamara: I love to spend a few weeks (or months) getting into the world of a new play by immersing myself in research of all kinds.
In this case, that meant diving in to the classic canon of Universal Pictures monster movies - you know the ones. Dracula with Bela Lugosi, Frankenstein with Boris Karloff, The Mummy (also with Boris Karloff in a truly delicious, pre-Hays Code flick!), The Wolf Man with Lon Chaney, Jr., The Invisible Man with a fully unhinged and mesmerizing performance, and of course - Creature from the Black Lagoon.
I also dove into some great academic work on the connection between queerness and horror, and how early horror films were often a way for queer artists to explore ideas of queerness and otherness in ways that could slip by the Hays Code censors. There's a great article by Tosha R. Taylor that digs into the personal experience of being queer in rural appalachia, and having classic horror be an avenue to self-discovery of queerness and self-acceptance called The Wolf Man's Daughter that I found particularly inspiring!
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Q: You’ve talked in the past about how you begin with images in your head and then let scenes grow out around them. How did that translate into your process for this show?
Tamara: I'm very much a visual learner, and I love pulling visual inspiration from art history, film history, nature - anything that connects the ideas of the story I'm trying to tell to the subconscious or lived experience of the audience. So for this one, keep an eye out for staging inspired by classic horror tropes - particularly The Mummy, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Wolf Man, and Frankenstein.
But that's not all! Playwright Christian St. Croix weaves direct address throughout the play, seamlessly through scenes in the present, in memory, and in nightmare. So I also took inspiration from films like Do The Right Thing and even reality TV to help anchor these scenes and keep the audience on the edge of their seat until the big finish.
Q: What was your strongest mental image for this show, and did it make it into the “final cut”?
A girl doesn't want to give away all her secrets, now, does she?
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Learn all the secrets when you join us for Monsters of the American Cinema, opening September 22 at the Know!
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Adventurous live theatre is only possible when people show up.
Here are the best ways to show up for the art & artists
of Know Theatre today:
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