“There are darknesses in life and there are lights; you are one of the lights.”
Nightmares
Give Them
Act II
Jonathan Harker's Danse ex Lupo
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Jonathan's tale starts with a time jump forward before an unfortunate night at the theater, awakens a story he attempted to bury. Entering his own silent film , Harker is pulled back into a nightmare from which he never should have escaped. Only his own inner strength and love for his fiance bring him home, but at what price? Thus begins the psychological onslaught of the second act. Filled with absurd abstraction, the second act abounds with chess metaphors and Lewis Carroll imagery that blends European wolf dread with American First Nation mythology. When Mina is attacked, her descent is accelerated and accentuated by an actual battle that she fights in the bed of her mind.
The play is ultimately grounded in the seemingly grounded final battle at Borgo Pass, but once again, nothing is as it seems and the "reality" returns to nightmare and "real" monsters who will do anything to survive. The victory is ultimate, satisfying and darkly unsettling as the characters attempt to "rest in peace."
Act I
Lucy Westenra's
Danse Macabre
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Lucy Westenra's Danse of Death is a living, sensory nightmare. In the quest for her redemption, she and her suitors must face personal demons and personal ideations on the journey to find a way to stop her deterioration.
As the characters enter the fog of their own minds, they encounter a creature that can be anyone and knows all of their darkest secrets. Can they fight off their own monsters in time to face the ultimate monster?
Using the Jack the Ripper killings a macabre calendar, the first act introduces the audience to nightmares from all sides that ideally attack them with all of their senses with blood as the only constant. Dreams, visions and unholy encounters take them on a quest against personal prejudice, addictions and real life spirits that force them to rethink the novel and the stage. Using humor to punctuate the grotesqueseness of vampirism and its folklore, the first act builds to an Exorcist-esque climax that illustrates the utter depravity that Dracula brings. Forcing the audience in to a multi-layered dream that seems inescapable.
Dracula: A Requiem in Terror should inspire just that "terror." Terror is defined as "a state of intense or overwhelming fear." That should be the goal, terror, not horror. What is scarier than a nightmare? The structure of the play flows in the disjointed and nebulus world of a fever dream The audience in never certain what is waking and what is dreaming.
The actors act and interact with complete conviction to their characters despite the nightmarish action around them.
The work of the production team should be to pile layer upon layer of nightmare narratives in a way to keep the audience off-kilter and ultimately feel relief and release when they awaken and emerge from the nightmare.
