October 7, 2022
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media Contact: 
Steve Patterson: splatterson@mindspring.com

Playwrights West Presents Venomous House

On Halloween night, Playwrights West presents a world-premiere concert reading of Venomous House, a Ghost Story in Two-Acts, by Oregon Book Award-winning playwright Steve Patterson. 

Venomous House will have a single free performance at 7:30 pm, October 31, at Milagro Theatre, 525 SE Stark St., Portland, Oregon. Though the reading is free of charge (donations are appreciated) and no tickets are required, seating is first-come, first-served (festival seating). Doors open at 7:15 pm.

Award-winning director and Playwrights West co-founder Matt Zrebski directs this eerie play-within-a-play about a theatre company rehearsing a new script about an infamous, reportedly true English ghost story: the Haunting of Hinton Ampner. 

Things go awry. Increasingly.

The Hinton Ampner story likely influenced Henry James in writing The Turn of the Screw, which for years has confounded literary critics who try to determine whether the haunting is real or in the mind of the governess. “Every haunting occurs within the human mind,” Patterson notes. “The interesting ones occur inside the head and out in the hallway at 4:00 am. My interest falls between those two.”

Over the last four years, Patterson has refined Venomous House through private readings and extensive research, which has included studying well over 150 books on ghosts, hauntings, history, psychology, and neuroscience to aid in crafting an authentic haunting. Additionally, he surveyed reportedly haunted theatres, interviewed their staff, met with paranormal investigators, and corresponded with noted authors on hauntings and parapsychology. “In ghost stories, the past reappears,” Patterson says, “but it may not always be the past you expect.”

Steve Patterson’s plays have been staged in Portland, Los Angeles, Chicago, Tampa, and other U.S. cities as well as in Canada and New Zealand. His full-length works include the war plays Waiting on Sean Flynn and Liberation (Original Works Publishing). In 2008, his play Lost Wavelengths won the Oregon Book Award, and three of his other plays have been OBA finalists. Patterson co-founded Playwrights West and Pavement Productions, and he served as the Dramatists Guild of America’s Regional Co-Representative for Oregon.

For more information, contact Steve Patterson at splatterson@mindspring.com