"Dreams in the Witch House" -It Begins...

J David Moeller, reporting:

-Chicago; WildClaw Theatre's Charley Sherman has adapted H.P. Lovecraft's horror tale "Dreams in the Witch House" into a four act play and is directing 10 highly skilled actors playing 29 roles. Set to open November 16th in Chicago's Atheneaum Theater, the play examines folklore, witchcraft, betrayal, murder, coincidence and horror in a quest to scare the bejeebies out of it's audiences.

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Cast members at the first read-through of the script. Dir. Charley Sherman (c.)

The WildClaw Theatre company was formed specifically to bring horror, science fiction, and fantasy works to the live stage. It's premier production was another of Sherman's adaptations; the horror master Edward Machen's "The Great God Pan".

Play posters by Charlie Athanas

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"Dreams in the Witch House" -The 4th Dimension

by J David Moeller

Thomas Whittington plays Walter Gilman who discovers

a way in and out of the Fourth Dimension in WildClaw Theatre's
"Dreams in the Witch House"

Chicago; -"Dreams in the Witch House" takes place on "May Eve" in Arkham, Massachusetts.

The local police have instigated a "Walpurgis Curfew" to protect the townsfolk from the strange goings on that occur annually on April 30...around midnight.

Seems a newborn baby dissappears...never to be found. A serial killer? Witchcraft? Magic?

Gilman seeks answers to why he's having certain disturbing dreams from Prof. Upham, his geometry professor who advocates keeping an open mind vis-a-vis the study of higher mathematics and the link to folklore and mythology.

But there are other questions that perplex Gilman as well. Who is Maurewicz, the quirky neighbor? Or Keziah Mason, long dead these two hundred years. Why does everyone shudder at the mention of the name Brown Jenkins? What is the strange connection to Lillith, the young pregnant woman he met on the bus to Arkham?

"Betty Anne Waters" -Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow!

J David Moeller

"I lost 22 inches and was never hungry!"

A character actor goes through personality changes faster than the infamous "Sybil" ever did, in relation to his career. A lead actor can make an entire career out of playing "himself" but the character actor rarely gets to "be at home" in his own skin from one role to the next.

The sacrifices made can be quite extreem ranging from gaining and losing extraordinary amounts of weight, ala Robert DiNiro in "Raging Bull", to this writer's shedding of 22 inches of lovingly grown and maintained hair.


It wasn't the first time for a haircut for a role. That came in 1978 for the role of Ebenezer Scrooge in "A Christmas Carol".

Then, in 2008, Johnny Depp came through Chicago filming "Public Enemies". I audtioned for the role of the prison warden in a scene where Depp, playing John Dillinger, grabs and threatens him in an attempt to break out.


I was offered the role, contingent on my cutting my hair, now falling to the small of my back after 15 years growth. I was under contract to WildClaw Theatre to keep my hair and beard intact for the role I was playing in "The Great God Pan" where I played a hundred year old blind man being interrogated by a Nazi intelligence operative...and had to turn down the coveted role.

Now, two years later, Hillary Swank comes to the Midwest with her production of "Betty Anne Waters", the story of a young woman who enters law school later in life to get her degree and fight to get her brother released from prison for allegedly murdering a neighbor -a true story.

Again I was offered the role -as "Grandpa". I would be working in a flashback to when she was eight years old. As before, the producers wanted the hair cut. This time I was under no obligation to keep the length, and accepted the part.

However, I did feel that 15 years was worth something in terms of compensation and my agent -Gray Talent Group- successfully negotiated an equally amenable fee for the trimming.

The film was being shot in Ann Arbor, Michigan; and, at the end of February, I took the train to the set to get the haircut by their hairstylist. They needed me in town for a photo shoot for pictures to display around my casket in a funeral scene. The rest of my work takes place mid-May.

I traveled 500 miles round trip to get that haircut and got paid quite handsomely for it.

It doesn't take long to reverse Mother Nature