The Road to "Stoker's Dracula" Part 2

"Dracula" seemed to be a natural choice for a solo adaptation.  The novel is already told through the points of view of different characters, using their diary entries and newspaper clippings.  I knew there had been one man versions of "Dracula" before, so how could mine be different?  I decided to use the original text as Bram Stoker wrote it, and only the original text.

Bram Stoker's notes for "Dracula" are at the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia.  I went there one day to go see them.  I was looking for some insight into why Bram Stoker wrote the book in the first place, what he wanted to achieve with it.  I asked the curator at the Rosenbach if there was any material like that in the notes, and she said no.  I was excited anyway.  The curator asked me why I wanted to view Stoker's notes, and I told her that I was writing a one man play of the novel that used only Stoker's text.

"Oh, that's never been done before," the curator said.  I knew I was on a good path.

I was alone in a reading room with Bram Stoker's notes.  I held them in my hands (covered in protective plastic of course).  It was one of the most incredible experiences of my life.  Bram Stoker planned out "Dracula" for seven years, something he never did with any of his other work.  I could literally feel his excitement pouring out from the pages, he knew that he was creating something very special.  Stoker was originally going to call Dracula Count Wampyr, and on the page below, you can see him come up with the name Dracula for the first time.  He crosses out Wampyr and writes Dracula, then at the top of the pages he writes "Dracula, Dracula, Count Dracula."  Like someone in love.

The thing that I really took away from the experience of reading Stoker's notes is the amazing imagination the man had.  How he created a story in his mind, planning it carefully, and then released it out into the world.  The book was well-reviewed, but never became famous during Stoker's lifetime.  He never lived to see the monster he created.  It galvanized me to finish writing the play, and gave me a purpose in performing it.  I wanted to honor Bram Stoker's creation, and do justice to his words, and maybe encourage people to go back to the source and read the book.

Since June 2011 I have performed "Stoker's Dracula" at many venues around Philadelphia, in theater festivals, museums, and people's homes.  It is a great honor to perform the play at Curio Theatre Company, where my love of solo performance began.  And to do it tonight, on Halloween, in a dark theater . . . what could be better than that?

Before every performance I talk to Bram Stoker, wherever he is now.  I ask him to let me tell his story well, and honor his work.  I thank him for the gift his work has given me, a solo piece that is my own, and that seems like it has enough blood in it to keep running for a long time.

Happy Halloween!

Become a fan of "Stoker's Dracula: A Solo Tale of Terror" at www.facebook.com/StokersDraculaPlay

The Road to "Stoker's Dracula" Part 1

 This is the first part of a series about how I came to write and perform "Stoker's Dracula," which is coming to Curio Theatre Company October 26 and 27 at 10:30pm, and October 30 and 31 at 8pm.

I have always been fascinated with Bram Stoker's "Dracula."  I first picked up the novel when I was about eight years old.  I got about halfway through the book then, up to the point when the stake is driven through Lucy's heart.  It's a graphic, bloody, and disturbing scene, and it was all the terror I could stand at that age.  I stopped reading.  I still have my first copy of "Dracula," and on the back cover there is a blurb that scared me almost as much as the words inside:

"The reader is warned that he who enters Castle Dracula may not escape its baleful spell, even when he closes this book."

It was right.  I've been caught in the spell of Stoker's masterpiece ever since.

Eventually I worked up the courage to finish reading the book, and over the years I sought out every film version of "Dracula" that I could get my hands on.  I became obsessed with it.  I have a few that I love very much.  The original silent "Nosferatu" feels like a documentary to me.  It feels like it really is Dracula's castle, and Max Schreck embodies the Count more than any other actor ever has or will.  I try to base my physicality for the character of Dracula on Schreck's performance, because he just stands still and scares you to death.

Bela Lugosi's performance is equally iconic, and the thing he really created was Dracula's voice.  When anyone decides to imitate Dracula, it's Lugosi's unique vocal inflections that come out.  For most people, Lugosi simply is Count Dracula.

Werner Herzog's 1979 remake "Nosferatu the Vampyre" has a terrifying atmosphere that starts with the opening credits: a slow pan along a cavern with hundreds of dried up mummies of men, women, and children, their mouths open in silent screams.  I always imaged there was a room in Dracula's castle like that, and seeing it on screen was eerie beyond belief.

I think Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 "Dracula" is the most faithful (for the first half anyway), restoring a lot of the novel's text and structure.  I also have a soft spot for Gary Oldman's performance as the ancient Dracula.  He gets closer to the complexity of the character than anyone else.

And if you love Dracula, how can you not find "Dracula: Dead and Loving It" hilarious?  The cast includes Leslie Nielson, Peter MacNicol, Mel Brooks, Harvey Korman, and the movie is worth seeing for Anne Bancroft's gypsy woman cameo alone.

But in all the movies and plays I devoured, I never found a Dracula that lived up to what I saw in my imagination when I read it. 

I started working with Curio in 2008, when I played K in "The Trial," directed by Jared Reed.  The following season I was in Conor McPherson's "The Weir," which is one of the best scripts I've ever worked on.  It was all about storytelling, especially telling ghost stories (I've also been a tour guide for the Ghost Tour of Philadelphia for six years).  The next show after "The Weir" was Jared Reed's one man version of "A Christmas Carol."

It was brutally cold the night I went and there weren't very many people in the audience.  And it remains one of the best pieces of theatre I've ever seen.  I was captivated by the idea of one person telling the audience a great story, allowing you to use your imagination to fill in the blanks while seeing the author's actual words skillfully interpreted.  Jared's performance took a story I thought I knew and made me see it with new eyes, and see it much deeper and more honestly than I ever had before.  It kind of changed my life in some ways.  It made me discover a passion I didn't even know was there.

As I made my way home from that performance, I kept thinking "I want to do that.  That is exactly the kind of work I want to do."

Around the time I started working for Curio I also began creating a Victorian theater program at the Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion in Germantown.  It's an amazing house to do theatre in, beautifully restored and also a gem of a museum.  We have a Dickens Christmas Party event every December, and I proposed doing my own one man version of "A Christmas Carol."  My adaptation is different from Curio's, it is more of an abridged version for one thing.  I can never forget Jared's performance, but I feel like I made it my own.  It was received very well, and I'll be performing my adaptation for the third year in a row this December.  I love telling that story so much.

But it got me to thinking.  I discovered that I loved being a solo performer, and I wanted to do another project.

Then I remembered "Dracula."

To be continued . . .

Tech Weekend - The Runner Stumbles

Last weekend was Tech for The Runner Stumbles.

Which means this weekend is Previews!

This time next week Curio's Season 8 will be in full swing!!

We're so excited we don't even know what to blog about!!!

How about some photos from Tech Week:

Steve (Rivard) in Jail

Costume Parade part 1
(L to R: Ryan, Paul, Liam, and Rachel)

Costume Parade part 2 - So Many Hats!!
(L to R: Harry, Meridian, and Rachel)

Rachel (Erna) at the Witness Stand

Photo Night

We had a lovely photo shoot for The Runner Stumbles last Tuesday with Kyle Cassidy. As always it was a treat! The actors got all dressed up, we scouted the building for the perfect backdrop, and got a bunch of wonderful press photos.

Rehearsing and performing a play about a nun and a priest in a church has its advantages. We had some lovely locations to work with around the Calvary building, although it was a bummer to everyone that the stain glass windows were dark because of the rainstorm going on outside!

Take a look at these behind the scenes photos:

Steve and Isa pose for Kyle.

Kyle at work.

Did anyone call for a lawyer?

Steve and Isa pose (this time we're out in the hall!).

Paul lights Aetna, who is creepin' at the top of the stairs.

And the finished product:

Press shot for "The Runner Stumbles"
Taken by Kyle Cassidy. Pictured: Isa St. Clair and Steve Carpenter 

Stay tuned for more behind the scenes pictures of Season 8!

Pre Gala Photos

Our 2012 Benefit Gala was Saturday, and it's taken us three days to recover! It was a blast!

Most of the Company Members who were in attendance were working various stations at the event, and in all the hubbub we forgot to put someone (anyone!) on photo detail. So all of the pictures I have are from the Pre-Gala setup.

Just imagine that the tables are filled with smiling, well-dressed individuals, who love theatre and enjoy supporting the art.

We really wanted to give away that horse picture in our Live Auction... but we thought the nice people at St. Francis de Sales might still want it.

All the tables are up, now for table cloths and chairs!

Here is CJ: Supervisor Extraordinaire!

That's where DR Ketchup performed!

The finished look! Now we just have to wait for the guests!

September Begins!

Work, work, work! The Curio office is a bustling place this week!

Here at Curio we start our season in September. And it's officially been September for 12 whole days now! So what's happening here at Curio that's go us so busy?

Well!

We've got our Benefit Gala on Saturday. We're having a whole evening of fundraising fun that will fund our new basement space.

Oh, have we mentioned we're opening a new basement space? We have? Oh, okay.Well, instead of talking about it some more, how about some photos?

We had to tear down a few walls in the process...

... but we've finally cleared out all the debris!

And if that wasn't enough fun, we also have our first full-cast read-through rehearsal for The Runner Stumbles on Monday! And then we'll have rehearsal and meetings and build days and then, finally, shows!
In fact, today's production meeting went fantastically well. Here are some shot of the new set:

Paul shows us where the next platform will be.

Do these platforms look familiar? How about that ocean?

Most of the set is up, but don't walk on it! Not all of it is secure!!

Be sure to stay tuned for more exciting news on Season 8!

Fresh Off the Set

I have always been told that you never know where life might take you. Today Artistic director Paul and I (your friendly neighborhood Stage Manager) had just such an experience. Paul got a call early in the day from John*, a Curio family friend who works in the Biz. He wanted to let us know that a local, big name movie** set he'd been working on was to be dismantled, and asked if we want any of the scrap.

Now when I say scrap, I mean that everything from a set that the higher-up movie-people want is wrapped, packaged, boxed, and sent on its way to be used somewhere else, and everything else is scrap.

Everything else is scrap.

Desks. Pillars. Spare lumber. Ceilings. Walls. Floors.

Paul and I packed as much neat looking "scrap" as we could into the van, trying not to gawk too much in the process, and drove away into the early evening feeling like bandits.

Pillars for Equus? A bigger desk for the Curio office? New seating for the unnamed New Basement Space?

Who knows. Anything could happen this season!

Stage 2

We're inside of the hanger: that big wooden structure is the outside of the set.

Here are the blueprints for the set.

It's an office!

Another view of the office.

 Paul and John check out the some high quality paneling.

Shorter actors use boxes like these to appear taller in the movies Paul asks: "Could we get away with this on stage?"

Above us, workers were taking down large yellow tubing that was used to pump cool air onto the set.

Those workers from the outside of the set.

"Scrap" that no one wants goes here.

*Special thanks to John for always letting us know when Big Things are happening
**I won't say what movie, because although Paul and John assured me that "nerding out" was OK, and that I could take as many pictures as i wanted, I'm still not sure that I won't be hauled away from my desk should I mention names and places. For now, I err on the side of caution!

Dumpster Day

We finally got our dumpster, and spent the day cleaning out all the junk that has accumulated in the basement. 

It is taller than Beth

Trash!

Cleaning out a theatre is dirty work

Summer Workshops: Episode One: The Ryan Walter Experience

Here are some photos of our first Summer Company Workshop, led by Ryan Walter. We had so much fun playing together - we forgot to take non-blurry pictures! But thanks to Gay and her Iphone, we were able to capture a fraction of the magic for you to see!

Planning a glorious, if short, stage adaptation of Little Red Riding Hood

Woolf and Little Red get into a fist-fight (that's in the story, right?)

Can it be done in 30 seconds? Liam and Harry are at once amused and skeptical.

"Do NOT make me pull this car over!"

Ryan Explains It All For You

A really big 'thank you' to Ryan for kicking our summer off right!

Destruction

Yes, our season ended two weeks ago, and Summer Theatre Camp doesn't start until July - so you might think we'd be sipping margaritas by the pool, but you'd be wrong! Instead, we're building a NEW THEATRE! Also, we don't even have a pool (but if you have one you'd like to donate, it is 100% tax deductible).

Today marks Day Two of our not-so-secret summer project. Located right underneath the theatre space where you're used to seeing Curio shows will be a brand new space.

Complete with our own entrance:

A Lobby:

A Concessions Stand:

(currently the 'trash zone' as our dumpster arrives next week)

An Awesome Staircase:

Even A Stage:

What could be more fun than spending the summer knocking down walls with Paul Kuhn and CJ Keller?

Answer: probably a lot of things. NOTHING!

I'll keep you posted on the progress.

-Liz