Paul Szmal: Good morning, 7.50, it's FLX Morning Wednesday, and the Seneca community players are doing their second annual Haunted House, October 18th, 19th, 25th, 26th, from 5 to 10 p.m., and on October 20th, from 2 to 8 p.m., the director's with us, Jason Hurdle, good morning.
Jason Hurdle: Good morning.
Paul Szmal: And you brought a cast member with you.
Jason Hurdle: I did, Seth Kennedy is with us.
Seth Kennedy: Good morning.
Paul Szmal: Good morning, Seth, good to have you here. This is something that was done for a long time in Seneca Falls, and you brought it back last year.
Jason Hurdle: Yes, it was, and people had just gotten away from it for a while, and I had showed my interest in Halloween, and so at one board meeting, Seth actually brought it up and said that we should maybe try to bring that back, and would I be available to do it. So of course I jumped on board, and so then I dragged him with me. So it's him and I, basically, but my name's on it as being the director-creator, and I designed the inside of the theater.
Paul Szmal: Which is where, by the way?
Jason Hurdle: Which is 202 West Main Street in Waterloo, New York.
Paul Szmal: Okay, the former school?
Jason Hurdle: The former school, yep. It's now known as Lafayette, Lafayette Apartments, you'll find it there. So I redesigned and we do the entire inside of that theater, and that includes underneath the stage.
Paul Szmal: Wow.
Jason Hurdle: When you go through it, you walk through it, it's not only, just come through and be in, it's not a five-minute deal. And this year we've made a bunch of changes, and with my design, I've designed a whole different tour to come through. So it's gonna take you a little bit longer, and hopefully it's a lot scarier. So we've got a bunch of real neat items that you won't find in different other haunted houses, and our actors are, they do their own thing. It's basically, I have them come in, and I let them do their thing, and so what it is, it's basically gets the community more involved, and basically you come up with your own idea, your own costume, your own mask, or whatever you wanna do, and then they just go ahead and do it. And then the other unique thing about ours is, we do not touch anybody. So when people come through, there's no touching. And I think Seth could touch more on the creativeness of the people and so forth, and what he does as far as his costumes and different things that he does for us every year, and makes it a real fun deal.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, so how do you approach this as a performer?
Seth Kennedy: So one of the things we do is you look at how the flow of the people are gonna go through, and the jump scares are the most fun. And I was all about helping the building, I'm like, I don't wanna scare people, I'll stay in the background. I had so much fun last year scaring people, that I was first to sign up again this year. And it's a family affair, we have probably six different families that bring their kids that help scare, they work concessions, they work tickets, Jason's family works, my daughter's helped me last year and are gonna come back again this year. And so you try to decide, last year, my costume was very simple, but people were talking about how scary it was, because I'm taller and a deep voice, and we just had so much fun to the point where we both lost our voices from hooting and hollering and screaming.
Paul Szmal: And of course, what makes these really effective, I don't wanna give too much away, but is the element of surprise, where you see something that is like a mannequin, and you see something else you think is a mannequin, and then oops, it's a real guy. And the crazy thing is, is every part Jason plans out works so well together. Even the background music heightens your anxiety, and then just a simple noise, something banging in the background that they don't know what it is, heightens their anxiety, and it all builds. And also distracts the attention, so you look this way, and then something over here is gonna jump out at you. And the way Jason has designed it, one actor could play three or four different parts because there's hidden ways to move around.
Paul Szmal: So that's what I wanted to ask you, is how you went from a blank sheet, or a blank building in this case, how did you go about designing it in the most effective way, and did you learn things last year that you took into account this year?
Jason Hurdle: Yes, last year was the first year that I had ever done anything scary at all, period. I have always done at my home, at my personal home on Halloween day, a big setup, takes me all day to set it up and whatever. So that just, I love Halloween enough. Well anyways, we got into, I got into looking at the theater and how it operates and where people could be and how we could do things, first of all safely, second of all, how can we do the most, you know, be the most effective in our scares and where we're gonna put people and how we're gonna bring these scares about. And I looked at the architecture of the building inside and out, and you know, it just, the way the flow of the people could come in and the different exits and things like that, and it just kind of came to me. You know, it was something that I just sat there and looked at it and we talked about it, and I kind of threw ideas out and bounced them off of different people, and finally I just came up with, this is what I think we're gonna do, and we did it, and it worked out really, really well. So at the end of last year, I said, you know, I like the idea of what we did, but I would also like to change it a little bit. So when people, if they come back this year, they're not seeing the same thing and they're not seeing the same anything. They're getting a whole new experience.
Paul Szmal: So now is this, is there a certain minimum age here?
Jason Hurdle: To come through it, no. I would say we are as scary as you can make it, so please be kind of, you know, judgmental on your own. My actors are 13 and up, and if anybody's interested in working with us, please give me a call. I'm still looking, we'll take anybody and everybody, 13 years and older. I've got people helping us right now that are 80 years old and above, and I've got some that are right down to 14 years old. So you know, it's fun to see the diversity of people that we do have, and just to see the excitement in the people as it's coming up. And as crazy as it sounds, it's a family experience. We have moms and dads and their kids, and we only charge $5 a ticket to get in, so it's very reasonable versus some of the other attractions. And you can get those tickets, by the way, at Tucci's Family Diner in Waterloo, also SenecaCommunityPlayers.org. The Haunted House, it's October 18, 19, 25, and 26, from 5 to 10 p.m. October 20th, 2 to 8 p.m. tickets are $5.
Paul Szmal: Going to be great. Thanks for coming in, guys.
Jason Hurdle, Seth Kennedy: Thank you very much for having us. Appreciate it.
Paul Szmal: Thank you.
It is now 757. It's FLX Morning.
