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Silent Theatre Band reinterprets “Freaks”

Posted by DCA Theater on December 10, 2009 in July-December 2009 Season, Carnival Nocturne

The Claudia Cassidy Theater was packed last night for a special screening of Tod Browning’s 1932 horror classic, Freaks. Over 275 people turned out to watch and listen as The Silent Theatre Band accompanied the film with a live, original score.

Freaks was not originally a silent film but Silent Theatre Company’s Tonika Todorova stripped the classic of its audio and added intertitles so that the band could work to revitalize and reinterpret the sound track. The result was an inspired jazz collaboration that navigated the audience through the film’s dark story about sideshow “freaks” and “normal” people.

Musicians
Holly Mead, keyboards
Rob Frye, woodwinds
David Taylor, guitar
Steven Ptacek, drums/percussion

This event was presented in conjunction with Carnival Nocturne playing through December 20 at the Storefront Theater. 

Click “Read more” for additional information about Freaks.

Freaks was not originally a silent film. However, at the time it was made, “talkies” were a new phenomenon, and interestingly, films of this era were sometimes released in two formats: one with dialogue, and the other without. In addition, most of the actors had started out in silent movies and the stage, or they were actual circus and vaudeville performers, genres that rely much less on dialogue to drive action. Director Tod Browning actually got his start in the circus and vaudeville circuits, moving on to film making later.

After his successful Dracula in 1931, MGM gave Browning complete control of his next project, Freaks. When it was completed, it was so horrific to audiences at the time that its climactic ending was cut in the States and the entire film was banned completely in Britain. A commercial failure, it was pulled from the market and disregarded and Browning’s career was never the same. It wasn’t until it’s rediscovery in the 1960’s that Freaks gained recognition, and today is regarded as a great horror film and a cult classic.

The story begins with a carnival barker introducing a sideshow freak, a human chicken called The Feathered Hen. She was once Cleopatra, the great trapeze aerialist in a traveling carnival that had many of the usual circus acts: the animal trainer Venus, the strong man Hercules, Phroso the clown...However, the story is really about the sideshow freaks: the dwarfs Hans and Frieda, Johnny the boy with no legs, the Siamese Twins Violet and Daisy, The Armless Girl, The Bearded Lady, The Human Torso, pinheads, and many more. 

Even though Hans is engaged to Frieda, he begins to adore Cleopatra’s beauty more and more. His affection for Cleopatra becomes a matter of pride: even as the whole circus laughs at him, he is proud of his love for a normal sized woman. She accepts his gifts and pretends to love him, mocking him behind his back. When Frieda miscalculates and lets it slip to Cleopatra that Hans is to inherit a great fortune, her motives become darker.  She marries Hans (though also in a relationship with Hercules) and plans to take the inheritance for herself. The rest of the freaks are so kind and trusting that they want to welcome her into their community even though she is a “normal” person. However, at the wedding party, drunk and frightened, she insults the freaks and then worse; she begins poisoning Hans in a desperate effort to obtain his fortune. When the sideshow discovers this, they mobilize to get their revenge and transform Cleopatra into a true carnival freak: The Feathered Hen.