Enormity, Girl, and the Earthquake in Her Lungs is one of two new plays in Toronto examining how to frighten theatregoers.

Plays aren’t often scary. Spooky? Yes. Thought-provoking? Hopefully, yes. A little unsettling? Sure.

But it’s rare that a piece of theatre is so downright scary that it jolts you from your seat in the same way a horror film might.

In Toronto, two new plays are interrogating what it means to frighten an audience. The Veil , written by Keith Barker and Thomas Morgan Jones, pulls out all the scenographical stops to create an atmosphere in which anything could happen: A light could flicker, threatening to plunge Crow’s Theatre’s teeny studio space into darkness. A prop could move all on its own. The play is gripping, devastating and, yes, terrifying.

Chelsea Woolley’

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