Marty Chan Gave Me Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

(FYI: I’m not going to give you guys a synopsis of the play, only because when I originally saw it, I was lucky enough to have missed out on all the publicity and saw it completely cold – which made it that much more powerful.  If you do want more info, check here.)

Picture it, kids; Edmonton, 1999. It was the beginning of the era of reality entertainment.  Survivor was still a just a rumoured show-to-come, provoking the ire of critics; The Blair Witch Project was doing boffo box office; and I was a naïve teenager, in love with Quentin Tarantino, Chow Yun Fat, and pretty much anything drenched in blood and gore.  Therefore, I reasoned, I certainly had to see Marty Chan’s much talked about new Fringe show, “The Bone House.”

No word of a lie, I left that theatre a changed woman. No more Quentin Tarantino, no more Chow Yun Fat, no more ANYTHING but romantic comedies, Adam Sandler movies and movies featuring cartoon monkeys.

Never again have I been able to tolerate horror films, shoot ‘em ups, or anything with any level of violence.   For the last ten years, I have given every person who asks “Why don’t you like violent movies?” my condensed review of the terrifying reality-theatre-horror of Edmonton playwright Marty Chan’s “The Bone House,” along with a description of how the sheer terror it evoked haunts me to this day.

So obviously, you totally have to see it. For reals.  It’s amazing.

When I talk to Marty Chan on the phone, he says he’s in a questionable hotel room in Rocky Mountain House.  He’s currently out of town doing some school presentations about the  children’s books he authours.  He’s a very funny, sincere guy, and it’s hard to believe that this is the same guy responsible for a piece of theatre that basically gave me post-traumatic stress disorder.

I ask Marty about the story’s origins.

“I had written a monologue for Northern Lights Theatre’s Urban Tales,” he says. “I was already starting to think about scaring an audience.”

Then a segment from Michael Moore’s TV Nation sparked Marty’s interest even further.

“There was one segment on how well people know their neighbours,” he explains. “He recreated a serial killers’ home…painted his door red…dug up his front lawn and dropped off oil drums.”

Moore then set about the neighbourhood, interviewing the people who lived nearby.

“The neighbours said, ‘he’s a nice guy, he doesn’t make any trouble,’”explains Marty.

“And I thought wow, how well do you know the people in your world?”

“The notion of how do serial killers not get identified?  People who rack up body counts, how do they get away with it?”

And thus, “The Bone House” opened to rave reviews at Edmonton’s Fringe in 1999.  After that, Marty says, it basically sat on a shelf for years.

“Chris Fassbender [who appeared in the original staging] wanted to resurrect it,” explains Marty. ” His producing partner, Tracey Power, wanted to take the show to Edinburgh.”

“When you resurrect a show, you’re always wondering, well, 10 years ago, did it just sort of hit at the right time…?”

Apparently, it was no fluke.  Even with a few technical glitches, it remained a hit at the Edinburgh Fringe.  Marty tells how during one particularly tense part of the play, where the main character demands to know why the audience is present, (“Why are you here?!” he asks accusingly) a terrified reviewer shouted “To review your play!”

Both hilarious, and a testament to what a powerful experience it is to attend  “The Bone House.”

“That was one of the hard things about writing it.  Knowing that there are other horror buffs out there, how do you pull the rug out from under them,” Marty explains. “The one thing I realized was that when people are scared, that’s when they’re the most vulnerable.  When they feel that they’re actually in danger.”

“It sounds really sick and twisted to say,” he laughs, “but I really enjoy listening to the screams of audience members.”

Village Theatre’s “The Bone House” (Directed by Courtenay Dobbie, and Starring Chris Fassbender, Kyle Horton and Tracey Power) opens tonight and runs until November 7 at the PCL Theatre in the Art Barns.  More details at the Fringe Theatre Adventures website.