Emerson Stage Explores the Supernatural with ‘Red Wolf’

Red Wolf is like no other play that Emerson Stage has produced in recent years.

“It’s a big, loud, campy, horror theatre play,” said playwright Madison Mondeaux, MFA ’26, winner of this year’s Rod Parker Playwriting Award. Each year, one student is selected for the award, which results in their play being produced and included in Emerson Stage’s season. Red Wolf is running in the Greene Theater through March 29.

The play is about a young woman who leaves home and arrives at a small motel at the base of Oregon’s Mount Hood, Mondeaux said. She strikes up a friendship with the daughter of the family who owns the motel, which turns out to be haunted.

That haunting is courtesy of the legendary cryptic “red wolf” – who shows up and “crazy stuff happens,” she said.

Mondeaux, who’s receiving an MFA in Creative Writing, readily admits that the horror genre isn’t commonly produced as live theatre.

“I think horror is an underutilized genre in theatre because theatre is so immediate, and you get great audience reactions from it,” said Mondeaux. “There’s something much more visceral and engaging watching something scary happen in front of you with real people versus being removed and watching on a screen.”

Mondeaux first wrote a draft of the play back in 2014, partly inspired by an opera based upon Stephen King’s The Shining. At the time, Mondeaux was taking a writing class that met from 7:00 pm to midnight once a week. Unlike what Mondeaux normally writes, she wanted to create something that would frighten her classmates.

“There was a little bit of playfulness to it, when we’d read it and people would say, ‘I don’t want to walk home in the dark at midnight after reading this,’” said Mondeaux.

Photos by Rian Nelson ’25

That’s very different from when she was a young Girl Scout, sitting around the campfire listening to ghost stories. She’d have to go sit somewhere with adults because she’d get too scared.

Mondeaux said she was a very fearful child, possibly stemming from her grandmother mistakenly thinking the horror movie, Child’s Play, which has a killer doll as the antagonist, was a movie for kids.

“I couldn’t have a Barbie doll in my room for five years after that,” said Mondeaux. “Later in life, I made a decision to not be a scaredy cat anymore. Like exposure therapy, I got into horror. I love a supernatural horror, the macabre, and spooky vibes. I love being able to create that sense for an audience.”

As the Artistic Director of Emerson Stage’s NewFest, which also typically includes a workshopped staging of a professional playwright’s work-in-progress, as well a program of short student-written plays, senior affiliated faculty member Joe Antoun works with Boston theatre professionals and Emerson Stage staff to read through the dozens of submitted plays. Antoun is the director for Red Wolf, and has directed more than 60 plays throughout his career, with an emphasis on new plays.

When the submitted plays were shortlisted, Antoun said Red Wolf really spoke to him, and he thought it’d be a fun project for student designers, stage managers, and actors.

“There’s suspense. There is violence in it, but the storytelling is just really good,” said Antoun. “Also, there are big reveals. I thought it was something the students would really appreciate.”

As director, Antoun needed to decided how much blood and gore to include, particularly considering that costumes and sets needed to be reused, so they couldn’t be damaged.   

“There’s a heart to this story, and I think that’s why I was attracted to it. The horror part is there, but it’s the framework for a deeper story here,” said Antoun. “We often do a T-shirt for NewFest, and use a line from the show. For this show it’s, ‘Sometimes the hero has to let the villain win.’”