"Be afraid. Be very afraid… of your sweet Mexican grandmother’s house," by Ricardo Gamboa

An exploration of fear a la Neo-Futurists, “(un)afraid” required I explore the sources of my own fears. Some of them recent and irrational and others, understandably deeply rooted. Some fears of my early years surprisingly led me to my grandmother, my father’s mom.

The notion of the benevolent matriarch in Latin American culture is widely known and documented in some of the culture’s seminal literary works such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” Latin American matriarchs are symbols of compassion, perseverance, and wisdom. My grandmother, Clementina Gonzalez Gamboa, is no exception.
She is an amazing woman who has survived the hardships most immigrants endure, raised ten children on Chicago’s gritty Southside, and has been a figure of warmth for me and my over thirty cousins. She hasn’t lost any skill with the nostalgic practices of our family: Making pozole for birthdays, tamales at Christmas, and feeding you the minute you walk into her home. She is small, rotund, and adorable—like a brown hobbit. If I could, I would love to just pick her up and put her in the man-bag I wear to work and feed her Jell-O. I mean, c’mon…

Don’chu jus’ wanna put her in your murse and feed her Jell-O?

Me and my cousins loved going to her house and hated leaving. We would pretend to be asleep and when that failed we would throw ridiculous temper tantrums. Mine were among the worst: I would cry, scream and tell my parents how much I hate them until one of them said, “C’mon kid, get up or I’m gonna kick your ass.” An ultimatum which usually resulted in me getting my brown ass kicked and dragged to the car back home.

What’s funny is although my grandmother’s house was an urban sanctuary no doubt, when I think about some of the first times I’ve felt afraid, it was there in that house…. I blame her—I mean it’s not her fault. It’s cultural. I have talked to a lot of other Mexican kids with the same cuddly Hobbit-like Mexican grandmother’s and all of them agree—Mexican abuelas have some freaky ass taste! F’real…. During the nights my temper tantrums were successful and I was able to sleep over, when it was time to go to bed, I would start regretting that shit all crazy because that house… That house became freakier than a mutha’fucka. Like if her house at night was walking down the same side of the street as me, I would cross as fast as I can to the other side of the street away from that bitch like it was a two headed rapist. You see, my grandmother, like many Mexican grandmother’s never question the freaky factor of their decorative choices. So populating her home were things like this:

Crucifixes all up in the bedrooms:

Religious paintings in bathrooms looming over the toilet making you pee all over the seat after midnight:

And throughout the 80’s, a handful of porcelain cats staring at you, staring at them lit only by the moonlight:

And other irrelevant porcelain figurines:

                        

And, something I could never understand, random Happy Meal toys on furniture:

Imagine any of these things staring down a four year old you past midnight. I know my grandmother never meant any harm with any of this. It wasn't until I was 16 that she renovated her house and all figurines became porcelain cows--cow canister, cow salt and pepper shakers, etc. She misses the ranch she grew up on. However, the crucifixes and cautionary paintings are still there, everywhere. They still freak me out. And if I were working in the Marketing Department for the Catholic Church I would suggest they revisit those bloody depictions if they want to increase their waning attendance. Seriously, if I have a choice to spend my Sunday having brunch with an alcohol of my choosing or staring at The Savior pinned up all crazy to the cross in agonizing pain and all bloody, guess what I'm gonna pick... Guess...

If my grandmother were to read this she would tell me, "Dios te va a castigar!" Translated: "God is going to punish you!" Every kid with a brown cuddly Hobbit-like Mexican grandmother knows that line too. I don't know about them, but that doesn't scare me anymore.

Tribute to a Master of Horror

During each performance of (un)afraid, we will attempt to summon, via a customized Ouija board, a "guest spirit," the ghost of a deceased master of horror - authors, movie directors and artists, 24 in all - to help guide our show through its many labyrinthine twists and turns. One spirit on the schedule is Edward Gorey.

Mr. Gorey was a Chicago born author and illustrator who died in 2000 at the age of 75. He is best know for such macabre tales as "The Doubtful Guest"



and "The Gashlycrumb Tinies"



Gorey's work first caught my attention in the classic opening credits of the PBS series "Mystery," which I watched religiously as a child.

Five years ago, for a Halloween show at the Elephant Theatre Company in Los Angeles, I wrote a short play inspired the Gorey I grew up with and by the musical Gorey Stories, a production of which I saw performed by the magnificent Sacred Fools Theatre in Hollywood.

This play, The Gobblerslough Children, will be produced this October at the Little Fish Theatre in San Pedro, CA during the run of (un)afraid, and since neither you or I can be in both places at once, I am sharing with you here in it's entirety. I hope you enjoy it.

The Gobblerslough Children
(c) 2005 by Daniel McCoy

Characters
Mr. Gobblerslough
Mrs. Gobblerslough
Jane, Marybelle and Gregor Gobblerslough (their children)
Viola McCrutchen (their maid)
Doctor (a doctor)

PROLOGUE: THE GOBBLERSLOUGH FAMILY

JANE

The Gobblerslough children had never missed a meal

MARYBELLE

It was clear they had always been fed

GREGOR

At supper they feasted on cabbage and veal

And then

JANE, MARYBELLE, GREGOR

Off they waddled to bed

MR. GOBBLERSLOUGH

Now Mr. and Mrs. Gobblerslough hadn’t

Said a word to each other in years

MRS. GOBBLERSLOUGH

But if either of them was regretful or saddened

They kept it quite hidden, my dears

VIOLA

The Gobblersloughs’ maid, Viola McCrutchen

Was new to the family estate

DOCTOR

The old maid had died from a fish bone or such

She’d been found face down on her plate

JANE, MRS. GOBBLERSLOUGH

The house was perched on the edge of a cliff

MRS. GOBBLERSLOUGH

Overlooking a lonely old moor

MARYBELLE

On grey winter mornings

MARYBELLE, GREGOR

The fog would drift

From below

VIOLA, DOCTOR

Up the cliff

MR. GOBBLERSLOUGH

To the windows and doors

MR. & MRS. GOBBLERSLOUGH, GREGOR, MARYBELLE, JANE

Where inside were the Gobblersloughs

JANE

Eating and sighing

MR. GOBBLERSLOUGH

Staring and eyeing

MR. & MRS. GOBBLERSLOUGH

Each other

‘Cross tables that stretched on for years

VIOLA

Of silence and hidden resentments and fears

ALL

And outside the house was encased in the fog

DOCTOR

As it hovered and waited

VIOLA

As the family within

GREGOR, MARYBELLE, JANE

Were consumed by a thousand fold secrets and sins

ALL

And that’s how our story begins

PART 1: THE DEATH OF GREGOR GOBBLERSLOUGH

(A SCREAM)

VIOLA

One morning the family woke before dawn

To a terrible scream from below

They raced down the stairs with their nightshirts half on

To discover young Gregor

MR. & MRS. GOBBLERSLOUGH, MARYBELLE, JANE

Oh no

GREGOR

Young Gregor, it seems, had been sleepwalking when he

Went tumbling down two flights of stairs

DOCTOR

The doctor had seen this before, in fact many

Such cases brought families to tears

(Pause)

To tears

(The cry)

MR. GOBBLERSLOUGH

They buried the child in a plot on the moor

JANE

Where dozens of Gobblersloughs lay

GREGOR

His headstone read “Gregor – Died 1904

“There’s Really Not Much More To Say”

VIOLA

That night the whole house was surrounded by fog

MR. & MRS. GOBBLERSLOUGH, JANE, MARYBELLE

And the Gobblersloughs huddled indoors

MRS. GOBBLERSLOUGH

The air was thick with the stench of a bog

GREGOR

And a howl could be heard on the moors

PART 2: THE DEATH OF JANE GOBBLERSLOUGH

(A SCREAM)

VIOLA

A scream once again woke them all before dawn

And this time it came from the kitchen

They quickly discovered the oven was on

And inside was young Jane, burnt n’ twitchin’…

DOCTOR

“Young Jane mistook oven for bed,”

MR. & MRS. GOBBLERSLOUGH, MARYBELLE

Said the Doc

DOCTOR

“In a moment’s delusional trance.”

JANE

On the moor she was buried and carved on her rock

Was “Jane – Well, She Had Her Chance”

VIOLA

That night as the fog squeezed the house like a fist

And the shadows inside prowled and crept

DOCTOR

Mr. Gobblerslough favored his wife with a kiss

And alone, for the first time, she wept

(Pause)

She wept

(She weeps)

INTERLUDE: THE GOBBLERSLOUGH FAMILY HISTORY

GREGOR

Before we proceed with the rest of the play

JANE

We must offer some explanation

For the Gobblersloughs’ manners.

GREGOR

I’m sorry to say

GREGOR, JANE

That grieving is not their vocation

MRS. GOBBLERSLOUGH

The family history’s riddled, you see

With death after untimely death

MR. GOBBLERSLOUGH

So it’s really not given them reason to be

ALL

Mmm…surprised…

MR. & MRS. GOBBLERSLOUGH

That their children no longer draw breath

MR. GOBBLERSLOUGH

Mr. Gobblerslough’s brother, Phineas, had died

Installing a large weather vane

A storm had snuck up and “poof” he was fried

His ashes washed away in the rain

MRS. GOBBLERSLOUGH

Grandmama died of a bee in her greens

Her head swelled up like a balloon

JANE

Cousin Bert almost reached the end of his teens

Before choking to death on a spoon

MARYBELLE

Aunt Twyla was trampled to death by a cow

GREGOR

Uncle Fredrick fell into a well

JANE

Their children, suddenly orphans now

GREGOR, JANE

Knew their time would soon come as well

PART 3: THE DEATH OF MARYBELLE GOBBLERSLOUGH

DOCTOR

But back to our tale

VIOLA

Just one child remains

VIOLA, DOCTOR

In the Gobblersloughs’ story of sorrow

MARYBELLE

Young Marybelle’s parents were wracking their brains

How to keep her alive ‘til tomorrow

MR. GOBBLERSLOUGH

They finally agreed upon tying her down

To her bed

MRS. GOBBLERSLOUGH

Then both standing guard

MARYBELLE

But they soon fell asleep and young Marybelle found

That escaping their knots wasn’t hard

She crept down the stairs holding only a candle

To face what dark terrors might wait

But the fear was much more than her wee heart could handle

And young Mary fell into a faint

She awoke in the dark and felt on each side

The cold wood of a casket around her

She screamed and pounded and wailed and cried

But ‘twas too late and nobody found her

DOCTOR

“Your child, it seems,”

ALL

The Doctor had said

DOCTOR

“Is the victim of ‘fainting disease’

“Though she may seem in swoon, she’s really quite dead

“Now bury her quick if you please.”

GREGOR, JANE

Her tombstone read “Marybelle – So Much For Her”

MRS. GOBBLERSLOUGH

And her parents stood silently by

Not a word passed between them

MR. GOBBLERSLOUGH

But a change had occurred

MR. & MRS. GOBBLERSLOUGH

In the field where all Gobblersloughs lie

JANE

As the night crept around

GREGOR

And the light rolled away

MR. & MRS. GOBBLERSLOUGH

They remained side by side, hand in hand

MARYBELLE

And the last of the Gobblersloughs, still to this day

Are said there forever to stand

EPILOGUE: THE GOBBLERSLOUGH CHILDREN

VIOLA

The doctor and maid took over the place

DOCTOR

For they’d worked long and hard to possess it

VIOLA

She’d accomplished her murders with effortless grace

DOCTOR

And his misdiagnoses were odd but believable

MR. & MRS. GOBBLERSLOUGH

Both of the cohorts knew they were evil

VIOLA, DOCTOR

But soon they forgave themselves

VIOLA

Really who wouldn’t

DOCTOR

‘Fore nothing can comfort an unsettled mind

Like luxury

VIOLA

Ownership

MR. & MRS. GOBBLERSLOUGH

Distance and time

VIOLA

“And so what if we wake on occasion,”

ALL

They said

VIOLA

“To a Gobblerslough child

DOCTOR

“At the foot of the bed

VIOLA

“Eating veal and cabbage like they did back in life

VIOLA, DOCTOR

“In one hand a fork and the other a knife

DOCTOR

“For indeed it’s been years that the three have been dead

ALL

“But even in death they are always well fed”

GREGOR, JANE, MARYBELLE

“Even in death we are always well fed”

MARYBELLE

Even in death we are always well fed

(End of play)

First (un)afraid vlog live and scary!

On Friday, September 17th, Dan confronted his fear of provoking and being involved in a fight. Cara followed him with a camera as he stood on a street in Bushwick with a sign that read "FIGHT ME". This experiment lasted less than 5 minutes.

The results are documented here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gn8KPGrD-zQ

This brings up the question: to what extent must a fear by confronted to be considered conquered? When is it simply being avoided and at what point can you be sure you are, in fact, unafraid?

Dan will confront this fear again in (un)afraid. On the stage, in front of all of you.

When experimenting with the nature of fear, it is hard to say when you are finished.

See you at the show!

giant cockroach encounter spurs second half of story

Events. Events are the things you remember in your life.

It was late summer. I was 13 years old waking up in my old bed in the new home my family had just purchased in a richer neighborhood which was zoned for the better high school I would be attending in the fall. The move was exciting because the house had an in ground pool in the backyard and a creek running behind it. And that very first morning, full of excitement and budding possibility, I woke up to my freshly-opened eye being tickled by a cockroach antenna. A big ugly water bug (thank you swimming pool and creek) on my white pillow, probably headed towards my warm little mouth. I screamed, I cried, my heart beat hard and an event was born. I remember that moment, consciously and subconsciously, and I probably will for the rest of my life...my life which was just interrupted by another cockroach encounter. An event.

I had left my apartment to take a break from writing for, you guessed it, (un)afraid, and left the window wide open to welcome the cool, end of summer breeze. And to welcome a giant cockroach. It was the size of a mouse. It almost escaped. I cried and screamed "No, NO, You can't live here. You. Can't. Live. Here." as I threw various shoes at it from across the room. Finally, I managed to stun it inside my moccasin, into which it had crawled for cover.


My roommate Tim, hearing my screams, and figuring out what was going on, took charge of the moccasin, dumped out the totally intact roach and killed it WITH BASICALLY HIS BARE HANDS (and a paper towel), and dropped its crushed body into the trash. I did dishes to calm down. Sometimes people have to kill things that frighten them. These are major events. The taking of lives.


And now, the rest of the story:


Fresh off our mental hospital expedition, we got on a train and headed into the wild, ragged North. Maloufs Mountain is a place I went on my birthday that gives you every single thing you need to feel like a rugged adventurer but rest like a pampered camper...fire pit, tent, food, cooler, gas range, gas lamp, picnic table, map (though I declined one this time after not being able to make sense of it, getting lost for seven hours and having to call a taxi to pick me up from someone's yard the last go around), bathrooms and toilets with running water...and forest spirits to communicate with at your leisure. Yes, more spirits. (There were other people around too, but we weren't in it to make friends with the living.)


After a long day of hiking straight up the mountain, singing songs to a big green caterpillar and piles of baby snakes, lamenting the fact that no matter how high we got or hard we climbed we could, as Jill simply put it, "still hear the highway", we made it to our campsite. There was food waiting. Also much to do. After a night of stories, laments, exciting artistic discussions and brainstorming sessions, we hung the video camera from the rafters of our platform sight and called on some ghosts.


Here's a sneaker. A real good shoe. 


And here's a sneak peak at some of our Ouija-ing. This is the first spirit we contacted. 

Viewing guide:

You'll hear me saying "Spirit...spirit."

Then you'll hear something walking through the woods. Right by our campsite. No other people awake, no reason for any sort of person to be walking by. But there it is. Then you'll hear me whisper "What's walking through the woods?" Then a whistle which turns into a roar. Kind of sounds like an airplane. But I swear we heard no such thing at the time. I only picked it up when I turned the volume up super high.

Then you hear everyone's breathing get faster. Because...to be honest...we were all incredibly freaked out.

And that's all you get...for now. A piece of an event. Stay tuned for more pieces.

The pieces of that cockroach are twitching in my trash. The pieces of the caterpillar and snakes are hopefully still intact. The pieces of the spirit were barely discernible. To the complicated relationship between fear and life and death and living.

To remaining (un)afraid.


Oh! And by the way, see the recent Washington Post article written on Malouf's Mountain by a woman who got more lost than I did on my first visit-a whopping 13 hours to my seven. Apparently, according to Dick, the salty long hair who picks you up at the Beacon Metro North Station and drops you off at the trail head, she got lost for 13 hours on Friday the 13th and ended up having to be picked up at exit 13. There was something significant he mentioned about 666 too, but I don't remember what it was. Maybe that's how much her taxi ride cost. Anyway, Dick was convinced I was her for the first eight hours we were there, and made a big deal out of teasing me. I corrected him a couple of times, but kind of liked living in her legend. He eventually figured out I wasn't her after all and gave me a free beer to apologize. I kind of felt like "Apologize for what? You made me famous!" But I accepted offered beer anyway. Moral of story: Dick and Malouf's are a very good decision. Go there. 


Love,


Cara

We hope...

Our feet are officially wet in preparation for our fall show, (un)afraid, to be performed at the Living Theater on the Lower East Side October 14-November 6. We are deep in writes and rewrites, the building of strange and scary implements (to use on each and every one of you), and we have trod through a puddle of holy shit. Our shirts are stained with freak-out sauce. Our sweaters smell like campfire.

The four of us (Jill Beckman, Cara Francis, Ricardo Gamboa and Daniel McCoy) travelled first to Staten Island on Friday, where we snuck into the grounds of Sea View Hospital, a former city poorhouse, or farm colony dating back to 1829, then a tuberculosis hospital through the 1940's, a women's ward, and finally a home for disturbed children. Much of the campus has been abandoned since 1975 (although a few of the main buildings are still a fully-operational home for the elderly) and nature has been reclaiming it, room by room, ever since.

We snuck through a hole in the chain link fence separating the grounds from a standard, middle class suburb and walked the paths between dark, vacant, overgrown buildings, looking for a good place to snap some pictures and try to communicate with the past. 

Upon entering this building (you can see us here in the doorway, pointing out at you like glowing ghosts),

we spotted a perfect circle drawn in the center of the floor with an old red towel spread out over the ground inside it. Word is, in the 35 years it has been abandoned, the place has been a favored spot for devil worshipers and groups conducting animal sacrifices and occult ceremonies. We were just there for the pictures...which we got...

This is one of the first pictures we took. Interesting because of the greenish lights surrounding Cara and Ricky. Also because we are holding funny/happy things. Theory behind this decision:

1. Funny/happy things look askew in scary setting

2. Funny/happy things will attract the ghosts of children.

Perhaps these mists and lights speak to some success at the second goal, perhaps they are just reflected/refracted sun. You be the judge as to the success of the first.

This was taken in a room on the back of the building, one of the smallest rooms we found (aside from the rooms without windows on the second floor which we theorized were used for solitary confinement.)

It is the room both Jill and Cara decided they would want were they committed to this facility because...despite its closet-like size (which we are fairly accustomed to as New Yorkers), it had a big window looking out over the trees and full, glorious sunlight. We decided to pose against the heavily-graffitied wall with a variety of implements, including knives, hardcore rubber gloves, strangulation rope, and a Bible...because perhaps the most violent thing of all is the good word...when horribly misappropriated...as we see here.  

As the sun set outside and our light began to dim, we prepared to end our expedition. On the way back through the entrance room on the main floor, we again spotted the red towel in the center of the perfect circle and decided this was the best possible place to attempt communication with the dead. 

We plopped our Ouija board down in the middle of the towel, sat in a circle around it, and tried to conjure up a conversation. We asked that any spirits in the place overcome the boundaries between the physical and spiritual world and get in touch. We placed our fingers on the planchette and waited. Then something happened. Dancing over the board for a few moments while we all swore aloud "I'm not moving it. Are you moving it...DAN?", something or someone or one of us or all of us together, living and spirit and in-between, spelled out "We hope..." 

"We hope.." was all we had time for. Our session with the dead came to a paranoid halt when a vigilante neighborhood dad poked his head into the room with his two kids waving like pesky, friendly otters and we got freaked out and he got freaked out enough to go get the cops and we jumped up without ever saying goodbye to whatever or whoever it was we had spoken with and started walking out.

Of course on the walk out there were the cops, listening to the guy and his kids, probably saying how we had no right to be there with adamant repetition. And of course the cops recognized Anton, our photographer, from his early exploratory mission the day before. And they were all like "What are you doing here again?" And he was all like, "Uh...I just lost something yesterday and I came back to get it." And then they said "Yeah right.", and then "What did you do with that popcorn?", referencing the now-empty popcorn bowl Ricky was carrying that we had used as a prop in some of our shots, and Anton said "We ate it.", even though that wasn't true...Ricky dumped it out by the bridge as an "offering". We wondered if they detected the lie, but played it cool, and the cops probably wondered who we really were and what we were really doing, because the truth was we were acting so cool we transcended ourselves. We hope...(d).

Then Cara walked by them and cast a dirty look at the dad (Because he doesn't really have any more right to be there than we do and besides, who brings kids to an abandoned hospital unless they're some freak who likes cleaning up nightmare pee in the middle of the night and taking them to the hospital for tetanus infection?) and said

"We're done anyway. We were just leaving."

And we were. Except Jill had to pee and she tried to sneak behind another building on our way out but that damn dad and his horror show children came running up to us with flashlights and we yelled that it wasn't safe for her to go right then and so she had to hold it until we got back to Brooklyn.

Moral(s) of story:

Ghost kids say nice things like "We hope..." and want to be your friend.

Live kids tell on you and shouldn't be given flashlights. 

Kids are better when they're dead. Kill your kids. 

And check back for our next blog on our camping trip to Mount Beacon, former mountaintop gambling, drinking, dancing, and debauchery station for the prohibition-era somewhat rich. We contacted the dead there, too.

And get ready to get your tickets to (un)afraid. We hope...to see you there.