Mt. SAC’s theater department will debut their first fall play from Oct. 19-22 with a live adaptation of horror fans’ beloved gothic tale just in time for the Halloween season: “Frankenstein.”

Rather than mirroring Mary Shelley’s narrative that follows Victor Frankenstein, this adaptation will focus more on the perspective of Frankenstein’s creature.

The director, Timothy Fannon, explained that as a society, we have changed the term “creature” to “monster.”

“I have a difficult time in rehearsal, myself, sometimes referring to the character between ‘the creature’ and ‘the monster,’” Fannon said. “We start out with the Creature’s perspective and we get to see through the creature’s eyes what it is like to exist in a world where everybody thinks of you as a monster.”

Introducing the audience to the story from the Creature’s eyes allows the audience to not only better understand the misunderstood character and put themselves in his shoes, but also examine humans’ instinctive response to the unfamiliar.

“In fact, in many ways, that’s one of the things that this story really is about,” Fannon added. He emphasized that when something is different from us, we can make the decision to either “look at it in horror and consider it a monster” or “[embrace] the fact that people and things are different from one another.” Through this unique viewpoint, Fannon hopes to bring attention to the impact hatred, disgust and fear have on a person.

Some of Fannon’s sources of inspiration for this play include Tim Burton and Guillermo Del Toro’s works. “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” “Beetlejuice” and “The Shape of Water” were a few of the movies brought up in rehearsal discussions that the team hopes to emulate in the play’s appearance and mood.

German Expressionism, an artistic movement from the ’20s, is another form of inspiration that Fannon plans to implement through the heightened emotions and melodrama of the story.

“There’s a lot of violence in this play, and that in and of itself, I think, is going to be scary on a visceral level not just because violence in general is scary,” Fannon said. “But because there’s a lot of violence in this world we live in.”

The Mt. SAC Theater Arts Department has been active for over 70 years and will present four more plays this fall semester, three of them being student-directed acts according to their website.

Tickets can either be purchased in person at the Mt. SAC Sophia B. Clarke Theater or the Mt. SAC box office website. While tickets for general admission cost $16, Mt. SAC students can buy tickets for $6 with a valid student ID.

The appeal of horror lies not just in the thrill but also in the psychology behind it.

The electric interactions between the creator and his creation in “Frankenstein” and the tragedy that follows serve as a lesson that has continued to haunt generations even to this day.

“I would love my audience to walk out of there thinking, ‘Why do we treat people the way we treat them?’” Fannon said. “Maybe we should really be a little more mindful and careful about how we treat people, especially people that are different from us…we need to embrace that everybody is different, otherwise what happens to Frankenstein is going to happen to all of us.”