Spooky Halloween shorts to show at Carrboro ArtsCenter Sunday

Magic, vampires and singing elementary school students will haunt the Carrboro ArtsCenter on Sunday.

The center will present “Halloween Shorts” — six short holiday-themed plays written by local playwrights.

The event’s managing director, Paul Newell, said the event — which is in its second year — showcases local talent.

“Halloween has something so innately theatrical about it,” he said.

The show will feature Newell as a vampire emcee. He will perform a musical number with a group of elementary school students from The ArtsCenter’s acting program.

The Halloween shorts are all created by members of the Playwrights Roundtable, a local playwright group founded by Newell in 2004.

“I had the notion that playwrights would be good practitioners of theater,” Newell said.

The Playwrights Roundtable works with The ArtsCenter to give writers the chance to expand beyond script writing to participating in all aspects of theater production, including directing.

In “Halloween Shorts,” the writers are also the directors — and sometimes actors.

John Paul Middlesworth, writer and director of one of the shorts — “Poor Little Baby Crying” — will also act in the short.

“Poor Little Baby Crying” tells the story of two parents who hear an unfamiliar and frightening noise coming from their baby monitor.

Middlesworth said he found the technical aspect of timing when the baby monitor emits sound to be the most challenging in producing his short.

Mark Cornell, writer of “Double Walker,” said it has been challenging to act in and codirect his short.

Middlesworth said he and the other playwrights have struggled with attempting to scare the audience, especially because of the live theater medium.

But the playwrights said they think their creations will be crowd-pleasers.

Middlesworth said his short is meant as a light entertainment.

“Mine doesn’t have a real redeeming value,” he said. “It’s put out there as a kind of way to see if this idea is as frightening as I think it is.”

Cornell said he hopes the surprise ending of his short, the last of the night, will shock and scare the audience.

But scaring the audience isn’t his main goal.

“I hope, above all else, the audience is entertained,” he said.

Contact the desk editor at

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