At The Altar

Kia ora!

Beneath The Bed Productions is thrilled to announce the development season of At The Altar in January 2024 as part of Victoria University's Six Degrees Festival.

What is At The Altar:

At The Altar is a project led by Sam Hearps coming out of the 2023-2024 Victoria University MFA in Creative Practice. The show focuses on Laurel Williams who, upon getting a distressing call from her sister, Daphne, makes the trip out to the estate of Daphne's fiancé, Marcus Barker, and his sister, Amelia. Once there, Laurel is confronted with the news that her sister has disappeared a week before her wedding. Laurel decides to stay and search for her sister, coming face to face with the ghoulish past of the Barkers and becoming the focus of something watching from the shadows. At The Altar is a horror story which explores relationships, vows, the nature of wedding rituals and how isolation can blur the lines of reality.

The creation process (so far):

At The Altar is the product of a design-led process, beginning with a set design and ending with a completed script. The intention was to explore how set design could be used as a playwriting tool to help support genre theatre - in this case horror. By reversing the process, it allowed for a design that catered to a performance space and makes as much use of the performance space's unique quirks.

Meet our crew:

Production Manager - Brie Keatley

Director - Rosie Glover

Stage Manager - Shemaia Dixon

Lighting Designer/Operator - Teddy O'Neill

Sound Designer/Operator - Josh Lees

SFX Makeup - Maia Young

Marketing/Publicity - Hayden Waller

Set Designer/Costume Designer/Playwright - Sam Hearps

And our cast:

Laurel Williams - Lani Swann

Marcus Barker - Sean Farrell

Amelia Barker - Alannah Munn

Daphne Williams - Sam Wahlers

Rose - Pan Clark

How your donation could help:

These wonderful people have been putting in the hard yards to make this show a possibility and majority of the funding raised through this Boosted campaign will be going towards helping provide our cast and crew with guaranteed payment for their time and effort over the course of the project. A small portion will also be going toward paying for paint for the set to get the moody sunroom aesthetic we're hoping to achieve.

We hope to see you all At The Altar.