Gentlemen, I Have Reason To Believe One Of Us Is The Thing!

Joe Bozic, Nels Lennes, and I have written and produced a show for the 2014 Twin Cities Horror Festival: "Gentlemen, I Have Reason To Believe One Of Us Is The Thing." What follows, in lieu of a printed program, is a set of credits and production notes for the show.

Gorilla Sandwich Productions presents
Gentlemen! I Have Reason to Believe One of Us is The Thing!

• which is a 2014 parlor farce directed by Joe Bozic, written by Fred Beukema, Joe Bozic and Nels Lennes,
• based on a 2012 remark by Troy Zimmerman,
• based on the 1982 motion picture The Thing by John Carpenter, written by Bill Lancaster,
• remaking the 1951 motion picture The Thing From Another World by Christian Nyby but allegedly secretly by Howard Hawks, written by Charles Lederer,
• based on the 1938 short story “Who Goes There” by John W. Campbell, Jr.

SETTING
A parlor in an estate near Sheringham, Norfolk, UK, during a snowstorm in the Winter of 1910.

CAST
Nels Lennes as Ernest Shackleton, an explorer
Jake Scott as Nikola Tesla, an engineer
Jen Scott as Marie Curie, a physicist
Joe Bozic as Wilbur Wright, an aviation pioneer
Dan Jaquette as Orville Wright, a bicycle shop co-owner
Fred Beukema as Grigori Rasputin, a mystic
Dan Hetzel as Buffalo Bill Cody, a showman
Sam Baker Harris as Annie Oakley, a sharpshooter
Levi Weinhagen as Harry Houdini, an escapist
David Beukema as Daniel Pamberchot, a butler

 

MUSIC CREDITS
Morricone, Ennio: Selections from the original motion picture score of The Thing (1982)
Bartók, Béla: Concerto for Orchestra, I. Introduzione. Andante non troppo – Allegro vivace (1943)
Stravinsky, Igor: The Firebird Ballet Suite for Orchestra, 8. The Infernal Dance of King Kashchei (1945)

SOUND EFFECTS CREDITS
Certain sound effects are provided by a Creative Commons - Attribution license by http://www.freesfx.co.uk, or dedicated to the public domain by users of http://www.freesound.org/. All other pre-recorded sound effects are provided by paid license.

PRODUCTION NOTES

• "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." - H.P. Lovecraft, Call of Cthulhu
• Great thanks to Troy Zimmerman, who initially identified "The Thing" as one of the great whodunits, which got this whole show started.
• Special thanks for Andy Kraft for his help with the creature effects. 
• Thanks to Ellen Jaquette for script supervising as we came down to the wire!
• Some of the books we read while we wrote this show include, of course, the original novella "Who Goes There," by John W. Campbell, Jr., which was the basis for the 1951 Nyby and especially the 1982 Carpenter film. We also read Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow, which provided a great sense of the times. And we enjoyed the ambiance of The Romance of polar exploration: interesting descriptions of Arctic and Antarctic adventure from the earliest time to the voyage of the Discovery (190?) by G. Firth Scott.
• The 2011 prequel to the 1982 film is ok, but has no reason to exist.
• The 1951 movie is also ok, but overrated.  I dunno. It loses most of the tension of secret identity that made the novella great.
• We know Curie was actually Polish.