Halloween Show 2014

This year marks Chatterbox’s bold leap forward into a new realm: the open script competition. For the first time ever, we issued an international call for stories to be produced as part of our Halloween Show, and writers from across the US, Canada, and the UK responded. Dozens of submissions poured in, challenging our judges — Charlene Honeycutt, Robert Arnold, and I — to winnow the offering down to those that captured that “certain something” we were seeking.

So what, exactly, does make a script right for our Halloween Show? I suppose I could wax on about how this year’s stories run the gamut from the haunting to the horrifying. Or tell you that we deliberately chose to mix lyrical voices with those of darker, harsher tone. Or note how these widely divergent stories all seem to speak at some level to the fear of being trapped — by physical or temporal bonds, by wicked purpose or sad circumstance, or simply by all-too-human weakness.

But those qualities, while important, aren’t what carried our winners forward. What made them stand out was something much simpler and much harder to find: Their scripts shot bolts of shock, horror, and delight through us with every reading. Each story was wholly original and beautifully crafted, and each produced a profoundly satisfying thrill from beginning to end.

It doesn’t get any better than that.

I close with heartfelt thanks and congratulations to our competition winners — Leslie Barker, Joy Bishop, Richard Hand, Stephen McIvor, and Jack Ward — who made this year’s script competition a roaring success, and this year’s Halloween Show a terrifying plunge into the dark realms of audio horror.

—Deborah Hyatt