She wouldn't even harm a fly

By Dionne Christian

NZ Herald·

14 Aug, 2015 11:49 PM3 mins to read

Edwin Beats in Not Psycho. Photo / Josh Griggs

Reality and fiction blur as obsession with horror genre descends to dark underworld, writes Dionne Christian

Given how blood-soaked his production of Titus was, it should have been obvious theatre director Benjamin Henson is a splatter-film fan from way back.

Henson says he watched Stephen King's It when he was far younger than he should have been and he's been hooked on horror ever since.

"But now I watch It and it's like nostalgia viewing," he says. "I think the response to horror films is that you can become desensitised, so where does it end? Does watching violent films make you a violent person?"

It's a question academics have wrestled with for years, and now Fractious Tash (the theatre company led by Henson and producer Jason Hodzelmans) is bringing it to the stage.

Not Psycho pays homage to slasher and horror movies, notably those of Alfred Hitchcock, with references to his films shot through the play: shower curtains, ice-cool blondes, blood-curdling screams and, of course, murder. Henson wants Not Psycho to consider the role of film in shaping our experiences and expectations.

"I think Hitchcock [films] exist on another level because there's a real air of tension and suspense and what he was doing was much more sophisticated film-making conceptually and visually," he says. "His work was a jumping off point - it opened the floodgates - and a lot of films would not be the same without Psycho."

Set in Britain at the turn of the millennium, it blurs reality by trying to work out what's happening to a young man (played by Edwin Beats) whose obsession with horror films has taken him into a netherworld where truth and fiction are enmeshed.

Not Psycho is the next stage in the development of Fractious Tash because it has been largely written by Henson and devised with a company of actors: Julia Croft, Kevin Keys, Bryony Skillington, Edwin Beats, Virginia Frankovich and Donogh Rees.

Its previous productions, Titus and Earnest, were adaptations from existing plays. This is the largest project Henson has taken on with professional actors and he says it's important for the company to be able to generate its own work. He's keen for it to have a filmic quality and hopes to push theatre conventions to the limit.

For Julia Croft, it's already a new experience. Croft says her most recent work, in Indian Ink's Kiss the Fish and Red Leap's Paper Sky, has been much more whimsical and gentler in the story telling.

She liked the central premise of exploring how much film influences our lives.

"How much of contemporary experience and personal mythmaking is influenced by what we see on screen? Films can set expectations and I know, as a teenager, a lot of my hopes and dreams and memories " particularly when it came to romantic relationships " were heavily filtered through the films I was watching. I like that this play is about the process of making memories and asking how film plays into that."