Haunted Hijinx

Halloween is right around the corner. It may be one of my favorite holidays these days. It wasn’t that way when I was a kid though. When I was 10 yeas old, I remember going to Amlings Haunted House with my mother, my father, my aunt and uncle. Back in the day, Amlings was THE place to go for garden fare in the northwest burbs and it had one of the best haunted houses in the Chicagoland area.

I don’t remember much about the haunted house with the exception of one room, a room with five doors. To get to the next room, I had to choose a door. I remember opening the fourth door only to have a person dressed as Frankenstein behind bars let out a loud groan, which scared the living hell out of me. My uncle howled with laughter. I eventually opened the right door and went to the next room of haunted hijinx, but I’ll never forget those doors.

Our lifetime presents us with a myriad of doors. Some are easy to open and walk through. Others, however, terrify us with real or imagined consequences that can debilitate us. For example, maybe we want to start our own gig, but is it worth leaving a comfortable job that pays well and has good benefits? Should we stay single because we don’t want to make ourselves vulnerable or settle in a relationship because our biological clock is ticking? An MBA sounds great, but what if I can’t pay off the loans? I’ll start writing that script, novel, play, etc. tomorrow. I’ll give up smoking, start working out, drink less, love more, try harder on January 1. Sound familiar?

While it can be hard enough to walk through scary doors ourselves, convincing someone else to walk through the door with us adds a whole new challenge.

How far would you go to win someone’s love? What steps would you take to protect someone you loved from danger? What would you do to save someone who didn’t want to be saved? Would you walk through the door when you had the chance?

Mouse in a Jar, a new play produced by Red Tape Theatre, poses these questions. It opens October 5th. I invite you to check it out so you can think about these questions and how you would answer them.

Robert A. Lynch
Company Member

Mouse in a Jar runs October 5-31, 2009.
Purchase tickets through our website.