FRINGE FESTIVAL : THE HORROR OF ONE MAN’S WAYS

He once published a 112-page magazine about maggots called “Maggotzine.” His favorite movies are “Freaks,” “The Gore, Gore Girls,” “Theater of Blood” and “The Fly.” But movies, he grins, can’t compete with horror on the stage, especially not with the Theatre du Grand Guignol.

Charles Schneider, a 27-year-old writer from Chicago, will bring blood to the Fringe Festival with a revival of a horrific theatrical tradition, Grand Guignol (pronounced gheen- yohl ), a late-19th-Century French theatrical form that grotesquely dramatized newspaper headlines of real-life crimes.

Schneider’s sidebar for a gory Fringe is a selection of violent, sardonic films called “Shocking Cinema” (Fridays through Oct. 2 at 2nd Stage), but the main event is a full-length play about carnival denizens, “Scream, Clown, Scream,” which unveils Tuesday at the Variety Arts Center.

A diminutive 1940s-looking figure with a sallow complexion and wavy, wet hair, Schneider promises that the production “will be in exceptionally bad taste.”

Mind you, real blood makes him uncomfortable, but he’s been fascinated with horror all his life. His father, an Illinois federal judge specializing in mental health cases who once eyed his son’s Hollywood venture through clenched lids, is now rooting for him.

In “Scream, Clown, Scream,” Schneider recycles the public’s taste for carnival freaks with the celebration of carny language. Said Schneider, through a gleam brightly: “The play is a brutal variation on the theme of the tragic clown--like everybody else, I’ve always been afraid of clowns--but in this case the clown falls in love with a half-man, half-woman.” The show will feature L.A. performance artist Glen Meadmore.

For the production, grotesque effects/makeup artist Screaming Mad George (Schneider insists that’s his real name) has concocted a burning cigarette that will be stubbed out in someone’s eye; Mad George has also fashioned a tongue to be torn from a victim’s mouth.

Is this a put-on? “No, of course not,” said Schneider. “My shows are offensive because I don’t hold back too much. I like to go to the edge of extremities, withdraw a little, then sock the audience.

“Originally, Grand Guignol grew out of naturalism and was very melodramatic. I admit to being playful with it. I find the combination of horror and humor very unsettling and attrative.”

Schneider was inspired by Punch and Judy and by novelist H. B. Lovecraft, whom he described as “that guy who took horror back to America and said to hell with Transylvania.” Other influences were Fritz Lang and ‘60s filmmaker Herschel Gordon Lewis (“Gore, Gore Girls” and “Blood Feast”), and the E.C. Comics of the ‘50s in the Guignol tradition.

That tradition began in 1895, generating more than 1,000 plays, many written in elaborate, dense language, including adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe. The Guignol spirit, characterized by realistic torture devices, was again popular at Paris’ 280-seat Theatre du Grand Guignol between the World Wars.

“Theater of anticipation was a big part of it,” said Schneider. “Stage torture or horror is essentially a more voyeuristic, participatory experience. Theater has a literacy to it. I loved ‘Sweeney Todd.’ Imagine a dental gun in a stage play. It’s much more exhilarating than it would be on film.”

Meanwhile, Schneider pursues his sideline as an editorial consultant for Amok Press in New York and Amok Books in Silverlake. He keeps in touch with members of a local theatrical group, Torture Chorus, and dreams of finding a spooky old house.

“I like living in 200-year-old buildings,” he said with a grin.