Giggles and CarnEvil

Scare acting vs. Regular acting

Scare acting is different than regular acting, a common misconception. Scare acting is more physically and mentally exhausting. We can work around 10 hours a night, some evening longer if on a trail. Always having to come up with new things to say or do so you don't bore yourself to death (how I felt in the trails). I'll get into that more later.

Scare acting requires a lot of improvisation and audience interaction. There is high levels of demands of the job, which is why some quit halfway throughout the season. Remember, just because you're a good actor, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're a good scare actor. You will be screamed in the face at, mocked, screamed at directly in the ears, guests trying to scare you, have things thrown at you or even physically touched or hit.

I'll admit, I've had almost all of these happen to me in one season. If you can put up with that, leave your frustration and anger at the door then it's honestly a fun job. I made so many friends working there in one night, it was crazy. We might be scary to them, but the guests are actually the scariest of them all, because they can be unpredictable. If we do our job right or even really good, it triggers a "fight or flight" type response which means they will either run away or attack us physically.

With regular acting you never have to deal with this. Yes you might be booed at for example, but never to where while you are doing your job be assaulted, it's a completely different experience.

Depending on where you are placed, you can sit motionless for sometimes even an hour on a slow night waiting to scare someone or even constantly moving around getting everyone you can. Some slide across the ground which is damaging to the knees if done improperly as well as properly over time. You'll even find stilt walkers getting their fair share of it too.

To stay in character is hard for some actors, and for others it's easy to do. Either way, it can be hard on the voice as well as being on the body. If kept up long enough, it can do some major vocal damage. If your character screams a lot, or at all for the fact, you need to scream from your diaphragm and not your throat.

If it gets crowded for scare actors we either have to:
1. Do portals, a fancy name for being up onto of something so we are above the guests for our safety. If our supervisors can't see us then it's a problem. This is used as a last resort when at max capacity to keep us out as much as possible
2. We sadly have to go backstage. At this point it's too much with way too many people. People are packed in like sardines and it's not safe for any of us to be out and about.

However, for regular acting it's not a problem at all. If it's a full house you'll all be happy, they aren't going to stampede you. They will be quiet and watch as you act. This isn't the case for scare acting.

So now you know the difference between the two!