The Emerald Pig Theatrical Society is bringing magic, music and mayhem to Maple Ridge for Halloween.
Things That Go Bump In The Night is a Halloween cabaret and will be an eclectic mix of live stage performances, music and magic for the first half of the show. The second half of the show will be a performance by the Sweet Max (Zombie) Band. There will be a dinner, a show and a dance.
Asher Witwicki-Fishman, 14, a Grade 10 student at Maple Ridge secondary, will be performing slight of hand magic for the show. On stage, he will be doing a cup and ball routine where balls appear and disappear beneath cups. Off stage, he will be roving from table to table performing card tricks.
He will be playing the executioner in the Hell Block Tango, a parody of Cell Block Tango from the musical Chicago as well as Dr. Frederick Frankenstein from the 1974 American comedy Young Frankenstein.
Witwicki-Fishman became infatuated with magic when he was eight years old. His father would make a coin vanish and then pull it out of somebody’s ear. Witwicki-Fishman wanted to learn how it was done. Soon he got bored with coins and started learning card tricks.
He practises his tricks an hour every day.
“I make a joke with my friends that’s my fidget spinner essentially because it is really finger based,” he said of his card routines.
Witwicki-Fishman wants to become as good as two-time world champion magician Shawn Farquhar.
“It’s nice to have another magician from my home town and he is just so good and he has some very interesting tricks,” said Witwicki-Fishman.
“One of my favourites is how he has someone choose a card and sign it and shuffles the deck. Then he puts in between their two hands a brand new deck of cards wrapped in the plastic and their card, which is signed, is in the correct position reversed. I love it,” he said.
Lauren Trotzuk has been a fixture at theatre companies in Vancouver and across the Lower Mainland.
Her background is in musical theatre. This is her first time with Emerald Pig. She will be playing the role of Elvira.
”I love working on cabarets and variety shows, original expressive performance pieces,” said Trotzuk, who wrote an original song to perform for the show.
“It was originally just a variety show,” explained Trotzuk.
“It turned out that as we were rehearsing we created our own kind of personas. They wanted me to be the more dark mysterious character,” she said.
What Trotzuk finds most interesting with the cabaret is that it will not be like going to see a play or a musical where she will be encapsulating the character. In this show she will be saying lines that are written for a different character but manipulating them to fit Elvira.
“One of the songs I am singing is Touch-A, Touch-A, Touch Me from the Rocky Horror (Picture Show) which is completely uncharacteristic for Elvira. Janet who sings it is very prim and proper,” said Trotzuk.
“However, when I am singing it I have to make the scene like Elvira’s teasing about it. It’s interesting how you have to spin it,” she continued.
There will be some funny numbers along with some sad and mysterious numbers.
She will be performing Sally’s Song from the The Nightmare Before Christmas, Touch-A, Touch-A, Touch Me from the Rocky Horror Picture Show, Love Song for a Vampire an Annie Lennox song and Phantom of the Opera accompanied by Peter Tam and her original piece called Things That Go Bump In The Night.
Trotzuk describes Things That Go Bump In The Night as an evening cabaret of all the monsters and the creatures that you dream about or have nightmares about.
“You don’t quite know if they are real but you are not entirely convinced they are not.”