by Lauryn Hughes | staff writer

This year, Halloween is coming to campus. The theater department is hosting a haunted house, the first of its kind in years. In preparation for the show, theater student senior Roni Buhler, theater’s vice president, creature crews senior Auralia Chavez-Coulson, and lead builder junior Duncan Hull have put in time and effort into learning how to use a hammers, saws, and many other tools in order to create a unique experience for those who wish to attend.

“We thought it would be fun to do a haunted house since we [have] actors and [can] build sets and stuff like that. Aspects of acting and tech [were] put together to make the haunted house. . Its October 28, Saturday before Halloween,” Buhler said.

There’s a lot of thought and energy going into this project. Actors have auditioned for parts, such as monsters as well as various speaking roles. One factor that played a role in determining how the haunted house will be set up is the amount of time allowed to get it up and back down.

“There are the two different tour levels, like how you’ll go on a tour… and there’s the high adventure tour or the kind [with] the low adventure, like if you want to get really, really scared, you take the red tour and if you don’t want to get that scared you take the green tour,” Buhler said.

While the haunted house is mostly for fun, there’s also a purpose: theater fundraising.

“Well we like fundraising a lot and most of the funds for our shows come from our ticket sales and also from other things that we do.”Buhler said.

With hosting something this big, there’s a lot that goes into it, such as auditions, costume making and set building. With a deadline and a need to take down structures fast, they couldn’t make their own hallways so theater had to make some adjustments.

“We needed temporary walls to go in the hallways. There’s going to be a few hallways set aside for people to go down and come back to the same area. The temporary walls are really going to be posts in the air with a curtain on it so people don’t go that way,” Hull said.

The haunted house can’t be all people and structure, there has to be a monster makeover to make it come to life. That’s Chavez-Coulson’s area of work.

“Creature crew specifically generally works with puppets, animal related props and kind of moving articulated things. For some of our specific rooms we may have little monsters or creatures that we create and set up as props. So I may create a specific little monster or maybe like an extra appendage or somebody that will move and be part of their costume,” Chaves-Coulson said.