Dracula – trydersmith.org

Photos by Richard Trigg

Backstage

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by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston

from the novel by Bram Stoker

Directed by William McNulty

Actor Theatre of Louisville
Louisville, KY
October, 1998

Stage Manager: Juliet Penna
Scenic Design: Paul Owen
Lighting Design: Karl E. Haas
Lighting Coordinator: Steve O’Shea
Costume Design: Laura Patterson
Costume Coordinator: Kevin R. McLeod
Sound Design: Martin R. Desjardins
Music: Martin R. Desjardins
Casting: Laura Richin

C. Andrew Bauer (Butterworth)
Joanna Leah Bruckner (Ms. Wells)
Jon Brent Curry (Harker)
William McNulty (Renfield)
Adele O’Brien (Van Helsing)
Angela Reed (Lucy)
Mark Sawyer-Daily (Seward)
T. Ryder Smith (Dracula)
With: Catherine Ingman, Margaret Streeter, Matthew Weins

Note

The character of Dracula has been played in many ways by so many actors – often unforgettably – that there seems license to experiment with it. I recalled from the Stoker novel that the Count appears older or younger depending on the quality of the blood he has been feeding on, and also that he is said to be able to take the form of animals, and so I had him age backwards as the play went on, and also played with having him exhibit the characteristics of whatever creatures he had been preying on of late. When we first meet him he has come off an infested ship, surviving on the blood of rats, I presumed, and so I gave him – compromised by age – a twitching, nervous quality, led almost by his nose, along with a instinct to skitter toward the shadows whenever someone approached; then when he established himself in the countryside, and was bayed at by wolves outside – “the children of the night” – I thought they might be his hunting companions, come to call, and so had his movement become like that of the deer he might be feeding on, with a sleek and sinuous carriage, very alert and reactive, and a readiness to leap or pounce; later still, when he has begun to feed on people, he took on some of the characteristics of whichever character he had just killed, male or female, young or old. He ended the play as a “normal” man of 30, very comfortable in his “human” habits. I had a lot of fun playing Dracula.