AACC students and local families were entertained by a Halloween-themed tour through the backstage and dressing rooms of the Kauffman Theater last Friday and Saturday.

Costumed actors delivered monologues about the fictional, frightening backstory of the haunted theater as they guided guests on a pre-Halloween tour.

“I just love Halloween,” Angelo Klonowski, president of the Moonlight Troupers theater club, said. “I like creepy things, so I’m doing something that’s fun for everyone.”

The Moonlight Troupers presented the Haunted Theatre event for the first time since COVID-19 temporarily closed the campus in 2020. The actors designed early-evening tours for children and families and scarier excursions for AACC students a little later.

“The Haunted Theatre walk-through has been a thing the club has done in the past,” Sean Urbantke, an assistant professor of theater and the faculty adviser for the Moonlight Troupers, said. “In terms of behind-the-scenes, yeah, it is 100% student driven and operated.”

Students who took the tour praised the effort put into the event, especially the costumes and set design. 

“There was a lot of effort put into it,” JT Schiavone, a second-year transfer studies student, said. “There was definitely a lot of care taken into making it scary.”

Klonowski said the guides told a story “about all the bad things that have happened at the theater.” 

Urbantke said the student organizers showed a lot of passion as they planned the event.