“There are darknesses in life and there are lights; you are one of the lights.”
Stoker was battling his own demons with his novel He gave him a face, he gave him a name, but he did not give him redemption. But the audience should receive it. This play is a journey that celebrates survival: finding the will, the strength and the worth to face your personal vampire and gut him. That is why Dracula must be an absolute. so his obliteration will echo as triumph for anyone who experiences it. This play is meant to be release and relief.
I’ve always believed that the stage is the ultimate playground. That directors and designers are responsible for providing the equipment for the actors to play on. In this respect, I wanted to create a piece that invited people to play and explore the text and the ideas behind it. Nothing should be off the table. It’s the type of play that should be immersive, physically or mentally. Don’t be afraid of the audience as a character. Take them on the ride. Make it an event. I had a vision, but it’s not the only vision. Play on!
from
the Author
Gary Hall
We put ourselves at great risk when we say vampires don’t exist.
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Vampires have been around in every culture since the beginning of time and yet we all know they’re not real, right? Certainly the discovery of tuberculosis and porphyria have gone on to explain wasting diseases that mimicked the effects of supposed vampires. Bram Stoker had a similar brush with an unknown disease that plagued him and kept him bed-ridden for the first seven years of his life. During that time, we can only imagine what horrors he might have experienced in the name of treatment, perhaps even hearing, “There’s something in the blood.” His mother Charlotte was by his side, regaling him with old Irish folktales of the sighe and things that go bump in the night. Who knows what part this played in planting the seeds that would germinate into Dracula?
So who is Dracula? better yet, what is Dracula? He’s certainly not a romantic anti-hero. Stoker meant to turn him into an absolute—monster. He is everything that represents depravity.
Ruthless, sadistic and sinful. There is no redemption in Stoker’s eyes. So what is the book about? It’s not an homage to darkness and evil, but a paean to goodness and light. These friends that banded together to form what is now known as the “Crew of Light,” allied to destroy an evil that threatened the existence of their circle and ultimately the entire world. A contagion of darkness that could expand exponentially across the globe sound familiar?
This play would not have been written before 2020; in fact, it could not have been written before 2015. A personal health crisis put me on a collision course with mortality and made me come face to face with my own personal Dracula. Despite ten years in remission, I had not experienced my own Borgo Pass with my Dracula and I needed it. Destroying, nay, annihilating him, became my own personal raison d’etre. Hence, this play.
