NEW HAVEN, Conn. (NewsNation Now) — Connecticut artists are using their talents to bring some Halloween magic in this untraditional year with a trick-or-treat live performance, NewsNation affiliate WTNH reported.
The East Rock Halloween Project, a socially distant walking theater project, will share the Brazilian folklore Boitata. It’s the story of a serpent protecting endangered forests.
On Halloween, New Haven families will travel from one garage to another to watch the play at four different houses. Each home will showcase a different scene of the play.
“We have a live, local musician who will escort, along with some volunteers, (families) from one house to the next,” said artist Addie Gorlin-Han. “Every single garage performer is performing their piece 10 times, so we’re doing 10 rotations throughout the night.”
The project emerged after one of the artists’ neighbors expressed disappointment about the COVID-19 pandemic disrupting Halloween.
“When we were talking about the fact that Halloween might not happen this year in the normal, typical way that kids experience, I saw her face fall,” Gorlin-Han explained. “I was like, I have a theater background, I specialize in children’s theater and education, so maybe there was something I could do about it.”
Gorlin-Han also stressed that in addition to providing Halloween cheer, it also gave out-of-work artists a paying performance.
She hopes it empowers kids to “use their imagination in the time of COVID to create a play in their own backyard.”
NewsNation affiliate WTNH contributed to this report.