Dracula 18

Rhythm Tempo

For Lucy I had to design two different rhythms and tempos: Vampire-Lucy rhythm-tempo, and Regular-Lucy rhythm-tempo. I shall detail the two separately.

Vampire Lucy

Vampire Lucy's tempo is slow. I like to imagine a big cat when I do her, like a tiger or a panther. Slow, seductive, deadly. It's actually a trick I use when trying to embody that sexiness is visualizing a tail stretching out from my coccyx. I imagine it moving as I move, I spent hours watching the cat that lives next door to me walking around and working out how it moves with it's tail. It's all in the spine. But the thing with Vampire Lucy is that her slow, measured tempo is deadly because in a flash she can be faster than light. Her rhythm is similar...slow and measured but unpredictable.

Regular Lucy

Regular Lucy was something I had fun building up contrast with. I had already made loads of decisions on Vampire Lucy's physicality, tempo, vocal tones and inflection and such the like, so this version of Lucy was more for contrast. I really wanted to be able to show the huge snap between the two woman, highlighting the change that Dracula induces. So all of my choices in terms of Tempo-Rhythm with Regular Lucy were made so as to highlight and contrast the choices I made for Vampire Lucy. Whilst V.L. is very slow and measures, R.L. is light and childish. I wanted her voice to have a quality much like I one I imagines Lolita having in Vladimir Nabokov's novel of the same name. Childish and lovely however somehow I wanted there to be a sharpness and an ordinariness in there. I will write a blog analyzing this comparison presently.
Regular Lucy is impatient and fast paced, she dances everywhere she goes on tiptoes and has a quality like a bird, flitting around the room but not in a panicked way. This is lovely to play, especially in contrast to the Vampire Lucy. I find it so interesting that I've chosen to have a bird and a cat as my examples for tempo-rhythm characteristics. Predator and Prey.

Dracula 17

Act 1, Scene 10 - Composite Scene

The last scene, Scene 9, ends with the vampire brides attacking in a clump at the center of the bottom half of the stage, the men slumped at the top of the stage with Jonathan stood, hypnotized, on the top step. Dracula is off stage.As the vampire brides attack, they begin to circle. Faster and faster they circle until they spin out, spiraling across the stage like a tornado. The whole cast spirals and swirls about the stage as storm sound effects come on over the top. We spiral into our final positions, sat across the stage in 3 lines, joining at the ends to form a triangle, with Renfield making the bottom right point, Lucy, Mina and Florrie making the bottom left point and Jonathan, still in Dracula's castle, making the top corner. We stay, sat in those positions with the storm noises gradually building, throughout most of the scene. We do start to moan, getting louder as the sound effects do, and when Renfield starts to say "Faster, faster, faster, faster, faster, faster, faster..." we stand, and rocking side to side on our feet as if on a boat that we're having trouble staying steady on, we carry on moaning like ghouls. Finally, after the final "Faster", Renfield shrieks "Faster!". At this all the sound cuts out, the whole cast bows to Dracula - who has been slowly walking down the steps throughout the scene - and collapse. Dracula collects Izzy-Lucy. He walks her up the steps, to where I am lying collapsed. The two of us are walked up the steps to the very top of the stage, we sit down side-by-side, the two versions of Lucy in an almost childlike picture, and Dracula wraps his arms around us, obscuring us form the audience's view. Blackout.

Act 1, Scene 11 - Heartwood House

Lucy character is transferred form Izzy to myself

From among the scattered bodies, Florrie stands up

"as if waking up at a party surrounded by mess with no idea where she is" - Andy

As Mina wakes up as well, Florrie talks to her and the Two Lucy's - Izzy and myself - stand up and face each other. The first line spoken by Lucy is said by both of us: "And the air this morning is so sweet you'd think it'd never get dark again." Then Izzy falls to the ground and the character is transferred. I step down to the bottom of the top set of steps and repeat the line, before walking down to meet the two other girls. The entire scene is conducted whilst surround by the bodies and intended to be very naturalistic, cutting a strange contrast between the normal, upbeat drama and the slightly morbid death that surrounds us. Perhaps this is a foreshadowing of what is to come,  symbolic of the troubles the characters are just about to face, as Dracula has just entered Whitby. 

I realised, whilst reading the scene, that Lucy is on her period.

Florrie: Miss Lucy, you alright? You does look pale.

Lucy:   Oh nothing! I've got a visitor. Must have come in         the night. ..my friend, my bloody friend

Mina:   The curse

Firstly, I find this interesting because it means that Dracula came to Lucy whilst she was on her period. It's both disgusting, morbid and somewhat appropriate. However I think that Liz Lochhead also put it in for another reason, which was to further impress the sexual themes in the play. Both the symbolism of what Dracula is - lust, temptation, sexual desires - and also the impress the metaphor of Dracula's "Bite" for sex. It's very interesting and a lovely detail. 

Another thing I noticed which I absolutely love is Lucy's line:

"And no whinging or the gentlemen will never treat us as equals!"

It's just a little detail, but it shows that Lucy is a feminist. Dracula is set in the late 1800's, several decades before suffrage began and almost a century before feminism even properly kicked in. Of course, this play was written by a female writer in the mid 80's, right in the middle of the new wave of female writers and during a period of huge focus on feminism and female equality. As a huge feminist this is just a small detail that I absolutely adore about Lucy, and it's something I want to highlight when I play her.

Dracula 16

Why are some scenes naturalistic and others not?

There have been artistic decisions throughout the play to have some scenes very naturalistic and others very unnaturalistic. Similarly there are some very dark, disturbing scenes and some very light hearted scenes. The reason for this is simple: contrast. If the play is exactly the same throughout, dark, unnaturalistic and extreme then the audience would become desensitised.  They wouldn't be as effected by the content of the play and it wouldn't be as effective. It can also be very boring to watch the exact same thing for 2 hours straight. 

The style and practices we're studying and incorporating in the play - Surrealism, Theatre of Cruelty and Antonin Artaud - mean that we can play around a bit. in naturalistic theatre you must rigidly stick to the style or the play would be thrown out of context and it just wouldn't work. In the styles we're using, however, you don't have to follow the rules so strictly, you can play around and mix things up.

Dracula 15

Act 1, Scene 8 - Heartwood House

This scene is very naturalistic, there is little action from the chorus. We do mimic Florrie - "Yes miss, no miss" - and whisper at her "You're not part of the family". This is to show the class distinction between her and the other girls. We put this in because Florrie is not in the original book, Liz Lochhead put her in for a reason. She represents a lot, particularly the class divide and the silliness of Mina and Lucy. We wanted to highlight this, and it also shows how we, the chorus, as part of what Dracula represents can get inside people's heads and draw out their insecurities and failings. This is something Dracula targets. 

When Lucy is talking to Mina and says "All this time and not a scrap of pen from Jonathan", Jonathan lunges from the crowd of lunatics holding him back. This is him trying to escape from Dracula, however we grab him and drag him back, cackling. As the scene is going on, a small group of the lunatics will be creeping down the stage menacingly. We want it to be so that as Florrie is left alone at the centre of the bottom of the stage, muttering to herself, you can see the creatures looming behind her. 

Finally, at the end of the scene, we (the lunatics) simply run, screaming and laughing, off-stage, and Florrie, Mina and Lucy also run off, leaving Jonathan alone on-stage to begin the next scene.

Act 1, Scene 9 - Dracula's Castle

We started off with lots of discussion on how we could do the beginning of this scene. The stage directions state: 

Jonathan is shaving. He has take up a wooden-backed mirror with handle from his luggage and has lathered up his face.

There have been questions throughout the devising of the play about whether or not to use props,and the group decided that unless a prop has significant symbolic meaning then it should be replaced by mime. There were some ideas about how we could represent the mirror then; some people suggested no need to show it, that Heta's acting would make it clear; others suggested using the entire group to show the mirror physically. However, the point was raised that we'd already had representation of a mirror before, in the opening scene with Lucy, and why not do the same thing? So we decided that the "other" Jonathan, Max, should be the mirrored image. The scene started off with Jonathan shaving, Max with his back to the audience so they can see the "real" Jonathan clearly. When the mirror shatters, Max runs off stage. 

When Jonathan, with the key given to him by Dracula, rushes to open the door, there is an outbreak of howling as he opens it and he snaps it shut. The howling then mutes to growling and Dracula exits, leaving Jonathan weeping Mina's name on the bottom step. Then the vampire brides music begins and in pairs, with the men entering from the left and the women from the right, a wedding procession starts. The women are vampire brides, seductive and deadly, and the men are almost zombie-like, entranced by them. Vampire Lucy is last, descending along, and Mina follows, falling asleep at the top of the steps - this is symbolic of her somewhat seeing the scene in her dreams back at Heartwood House.  

When all of the pairs have passed Jonathan and reached the bottom of the stage, spread in their groups, everyone reaches their left hand up to their necks, almost tenderly, and the men drop to the floor. The Vampire brides walk among the bodies, taunting Jonathan. there was some debate as to how we'd do this, as their are only 3 brides scripted. We originally decided to choose the three actresses who play Florrie, Mrs manners and Lucy be these brides, however we wanted the brides to show that it's not just the specific women, it's all women, and any person can become this. So we [the girls] split into three groups and share out the lines between the groups. Jonathan stutters "Who are you?" to which we reply teasingly: "Who? Who? Who?", circling him on the bottom step. Andy said that initially we were playing it too safe, to "nice", and that we needed to get into the roles. We aren't lovely, sexy girls, we aren't ourselves being sexy. these are like animals, they aren't human, they're beautifully terrifying. 

We wanted this scene to be big, as it's such an important scene in the play, and that the power of Vampire Lucy (Bride 3) and her hold over Jonathan had to be made huge. So we decided to add a lift. Izzy and Heta are both lifted in the same way and circle each other in these lifts, Jonathan reach for Lucy and Lucy drawing him in closer. When they are placed back in their original places the men drop to the floor and Lucy advances on Jonathan. She touches her body erotically, with the vampire brides behind her, mirroring her actions. She then reaches out for Jonathan and almost as she touches her neck she snatches her hand back, as if she's grabbed a rope around his neck and is pulling him in. As her "fangs" touch his neck, Dracula sweeps in and pushes her back. The vampire brides group together, hissing at him, and there is a confrontation. As Dracula leaves, he throws a bag on the floor at the centre of the stage for the brides. Inside there is the sound of a baby crying, a beat of silence, and then the brides attack.

Dracula 14

Scene 6 - Bedlam

We start off scene 6 in Bedlam, at night time, all of us slumped over - lunatics didn't have the luxury of beds, we sleep where we sit. It was fun doing this scene, moaning and wailing through nightmares, I gave my character a sort of straight jacket and wrapped my arms around my waist. The scene has a fantastic look about it, all of the lunatics wailing and moaning with Renfield at the very centre. When Renfield starts to sing "Who at Cock Robin, my head it throbbin', the sound of sweet sobbin', sobbin', sobbin'..." we all join in, screeching and cackling madly. By the final "Sobbin'", the noise has grown to a crescendo so that Nisbett has to shout to be heard. When Renfield smashes the plate of food out of her hands, we all react, waking up and laughing, then as Renfield spots the scuttling spider on the floor of the cell, we - the lunatics - mutate into the spiders ourselves. When Sophie says "...it's not nice, eating dead things", we lift up our hands and inspect them. The idea is that it's like we've got a trail of blood trickling down our wrist, we are fascinated by it and even slightly turned on by it. When She says the word "Necrophiliac", we slowly lick the 'blood' off our wrists. It's perverted and weird but it really shows off the perveted insanity of the play, the lunatics are completely given in to Dracula and all he represents. They aren't holding back on or suppressing any of their desires, this also ties in directly to Antonin Artaud's ideas which is why the lunatics and chorus work is so vital in the play. We could have decided to simply go off stage when we aren't actually performing, however the decision to incorporate the entire cast in every second of the play and use all of these ideas that I've been putting down is directly related to Artaud's ideas about ritual, releasing the double and being cruel to the Audience and the Actor.

The scene ends with us all, as a chorus, repeating Renfield's lines "Come into my parlor, sad the spider to the fly". It's sickening and scary, but for the girls Andy also wanted it to be sexual and perverse. Then, from spider positions, we slowly start moving our shoulders into the bat movements we went through with Siou in Movement. We slowly lift up, starting the movement from our spine and shoulders, rolling into our arms and rising as bats. We based our movement as a group on something similar to birds flying together, or a shoal of fish. Lots of individual journeys moving as one entity. We flow about the stage, from one side to another before surging up to the back of the stage and into our positions to begin the next scene.

Scene 7 - Dracula's castle

We start scene seven in the format shown above, myself in the position of the front left gargoyle, however our bodies start draped over the back steps. As the "doors" swing open, there is a beat before the two hounds rush forward at Jonathan, who lets out a yell, then sit in guard dog position. The doors and the draped bodies, in complicity, drop to their knees in a sort of bow (doors) and turn up and out (bodies) and the bodies transform into gargoyles. The gargoyles are sort of like the lunatics but frozen in terrified, pained expressions. Then Dracula is shown for the first time, stood at the top of the steps. It's a magnificent image, and the slow decent down the stairs is such a key, poignant part of the play. 

As Jonathan lingers before the threshold of the castle we all lean forward; it's Dracula's desire, he's compelling and willing Jonathan to enter and when Jonathan steps into the castle we all let out a sigh of satisfaction and return to our position. 

After Dracula has welcomed Jonathan, he claps his hands and summons supper. At this point the chorus scatters out into a semi circle, sitting in front of the audience facing in to the stage in a watchful pose, almost like animals waiting. There is very little action from us, with the attention in on the scene. This scene is very naturalistic, despite the completely unnatural drama at this point in the play. 

When Dracula mentions the "throng of your London crowds", we all get up and walk about the bottom of the stage, visualizing the Victorian city. This shows how Dracula has immersed himself in the English world without leaving his castle. It symbolizes both his supernatural ability to leave his physical world and join the rest of the world, a very scary ability, but also his presence in everyone. Everyone has parts of all that Dracula represents and embodies - temptation, evil, tabooed desires - and therefor is susceptible to him. We then go back to our horseshoe position.

Again, we get up and become werewolves when Dracula and Jonathan discuss them, circling Jonathan and growling. As Jonathan utters the words and Dracula translates them, we repeat: "ordog, pokol, stregioca, vrolok, vlkoslak". As we are about to pounce, Dracula ushers us away and we slink back to our place in the horseshoe around them. 

The scene ends with Jonathan hypnotized by Dracula and when Dracula exits one wave of the watchful creatures runs up the stage and grabs Jonathan, pinning him down on to the steps. Then another wave of the creatures rushes to the stage and sits, watching the audience and the front of the stage, and that it how the next scene begins. 

This is a very long scene, however due to the naturalistic nature of it there is not a huge amount of chorus work to set.

Dracula 13

Scene 4

In scene four Renfield is back in Bedlam being taunted by Nurse Grice. We return to our lunatic roles again, acting like dogs just as Renfield does. When Renfield spits water in Grice's face, we all react, cheering and cackling. Nurse Grice pushes Renfield down onto the front of the stage, and the lunatics as a group start to mirror What Renfield does as he monologues:

My master will bless you. He'll punish you! [point] My master is at hand [grab hand]. And I am here to obey his every command [bow].See the moon [twitch focus up to moon in the top right hand corner above the audience], Mr drinkwater, see how sweetly she sail, she wax once, she wane, and my master, my master her come again [fall to ground]. Oh yes [slowly look up], yes Nurse Grice, him come! And me? Me, I sit, I sit with my birds in the wilderness [pick up bird in right hand], pretty birds, little victims, pretty ones, how they do flutter! [eat bird] The struggling sacrifice, Nurse Grice, ain't it nice, [fall onto hands, glaring up at audience] that do quicken the heart, that give a little flutter...

 The final line, "That do quicken the heart, that give a little flutter" is said in chorus,in a violent whisper. We then descend back into madness and, laughing manically, move into the line along the back of the stage for the next scene. 

Scene 5

In scene 5 the chorus work is mainly reacting, we react when Jonathan starts to flirt with Mina, cupping her breasts and they exchange innuendo ridden banter, then as the bell strikes for lunch the entire chorus makes the "Gong!" sound. We generally sit at the back, watching in full lunatic mode, reacting with perverted giggles and screeches when Jonathan stutters over Florrie's offer of leg or breast (The chicken, sir, leg or breast?), any sexual references ("You can be my secretary") and we really react when Jonathan mentions the Count. This scene is very naturalistic and more for character and plot development of Mina, Lucy, Seward and Jonathan. Since they are the main protagonists of the play they must have developed characters that the audience can associate with and "root for". Therefor, symbolically, it's not as important as other scenes and our role as chorus is not as vital. 

Dracula 12

What did we do today?

Diagram of the stage layout for Bedlam.

Today we worked on the second scene, in Bedlam, where Renfield's character is introduced. First we started with the transition from the previous scene, where everyone goes from the line to 4 groups of mad people in the four corners of the stage with the front two groups having guards stood behind them. There are also two guards holding Renfield  with Seward stood in front of him. There are 5-10 seconds of chaotic insanity, with everyone acting as the mad people of the asylum (note - this is not our idea or perception of mad people, it is intentionally set to be Victorian ideas of madness) and then Max gives the sign to stop by screaming "SHUT UP!" 

We intentionally put in some chorus work to do with Renfield, like giving the chorus some of his lines so that we can represent how each mad person in the asylum is sort of like a side of Renfield. When Sophie (Renfield) starts screaming "Bedlam" the rest of the cast chorus it too, screaming the words three times before the guards raise their hands as if to strike and we flinch away and fall silent. When Sophie says "Screw Lucy" we start whispering and muttering "Lucy, Lucy, Lucy". When Renfield sees the fly, the entire cast starts to buzz and make the noise of the fly, slowly building the noise and matching her movements. 

We showed Andy and he gave us some constructive criticism and changed a few things. Firstly, he pointed out a bit where Renfield is singing the song about the lady who swallowed a fly:

There was an old woman who swallowed a fly,
I don't know why she swallowed a fly,
Perhaps she'll die.

There was an old woman who swallowed a spider,
That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her,
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly,
I don't know why she swallowed the fly,
Perhaps she'll die.

There was an old woman who swallowed a bird,
How absurd! to swallow a bird,
She swallowed the bird to catch the spider,
That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her,
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly,
I don't know why she swallowed the fly
Perhaps she'll die.

Andy wanted everyone to sing that song when Renfield does - as mad people - and he also added in a bit when Renfield is screaming "MY MASTER WHO I WORSHIP IS COMING IN HIS WARSHIP!" The entire chorus screams that with her. Her final line is "I don't want to want to let him in!" And when she's said that, the entire cast repeats it in a deadly whisper. We then start to laugh manically and transition to the next scene.

Scene three was fairly simple. Since it was just between Jonathan Harker and Seward we decided to go from the laughing transition to standing in three lines, creating three walls around the scene facing the two and when they shake hands and greet each other we all turn and face away. This makes a nice set, it seems to block the two off from the madness and chaos of Bedlam outside the walls of Seward's office, but we decided to keep in character ever so slightly, but stood in neutral. There are three points in the conversation when everyone turns and looks at the two talking, those are when they mention Mina for the first time, when Seward says "All a bit Gothic for my tastes" and when they mention Count Dracula. We finally turn when Jonathan says "Yield not to temptation", signifying one of the major themes of the play, and as they continue off we raise the volume until we're in full scale madness again.

Electric Shock Therapy/Electroconvulsive Therapy/Medical Science

In scene two we reference and also show use of Electroconvulsive therapy, more commonly known as Electric Shock Therapy. EST is usually used to treat depression, mania, schizophrenia and catatonia. It's use in the play is anachronistic, the play is set in the 1890's and EST was not introduced into medicine until the 1930's. I think that the play has hugely medicalised the Dracula legend, I think this is important in three ways:

1. It plays on the whole science vs. religion. Dracula/vampire lore in general ties in hugely with religion (crucifixes, holy water etc being used to repel vampires)and Bram Stoker was a Protestant himself, however Liz Lochhead's play is a far more modern interpretation of the tale so it's an interesting debate to throw in
2. Science being a modern this, this really shows the battle in the play between the modern and the ancient. This leads on to...
3. Medicine becoming a power in it's own rite. The electroshock therapy, the blood transfusions for Lucy, the opiates to sedate Renfield they are all used essentially to battle Dracula and so become a power themselves. Interestingly enough it's a matter the doctors and scientists, Seward and Van Helsing, trying to take hold control and the madmen and the women who often seem to be the ones in control, sometimes leaving the doctors powerless.

Dracula 11

Scene 1

Lucy is flirtatious, she jokes about letting Jonathan catch her in her underwear, however I think she actually wants to be! I think there's that little dark desire to be bad and be caught in that position, she has that little opening which allows her to be susceptible to Dracula. We discovered that the girls' mother is dead, this would mean that Mina would have very much taken on the role of being Lucy's mother. I think they both lost a part of their childhood, Mina having to give up hers to look after and dote on Lucy, whilst I imagine Lucy will have since then been permanently stuck in childhood. Also, Lucy loves her penny-dreadfuls. These were like magazines, cheap little booklets giving gruesome, dramatic stories about all of the murders and nasty happenings and Lucy gets them in full colour. Even though it's below her class, she loves the gore, the murder, I think she's fascinated by the death - another fascination that seems to grip every human, this draw and intrigue towards death and destruction - which once again opens her up to Dracula's power. 

Satire

The play is very much a satire of the upper class, showing the characters as silly and idiotic, this is especially highlighted when you see how blissful and privileged Lucy and Mina's world is in such stark contrast to the scenes immediately after it in Bedlam.

Suppression of Desire

Another thing that's contrasted between the first two scenes - Hartwood House and Bedlam - is the suppression of desire. Mina and Lucy's entire world is symbolic of this, the Victorian values and life led by the rules of society, governed by morality. You see this completely when it's placed in direct contrast with Bedlam, full of mad people who are completely free of these rules. Whilst Bedlam is terrifying and grotesque, it does has a sort of beauty in the freedom of humanity in it, people completely void of society's and their own constraints.

What we did with this scene

In this scene we decided to have everyone who wasn't directly acting to be sat along the back in a line, in quiet mad character mode. There are a few times when we burst out in reaction. Firstly, when Lucy mentions being caught in her drawers we let out one short burst of laughter. Then at her teasing line to Mina: "What are you going to give him before he goes away?" (Implying something sexual), there's a second burst, slightly bigger than the first. Then finally, when Lucy teases that maybe Mina will give Jonathan her virginity before he goes away there's a real big, proper reaction. The laughs aren't just giggling because they're talking about sex, it's also a bit perverted. This is something that the mad creatures get off on, they are the symbols of succumbing to temptation and your darkest desires that is all that Dracula as a character represents.

There is also another bit that we put in, which is the part at the very beginning of the scene where Lucy comes skipping in and singing. The stage directions say that she sings to her reflection in a mirror and kisses it, however due to the fact that we are trying to keep props to a minimum (since there'll be no opportunity to remove them as no one ever actually leaves the stage, and in any case it's better not to rely on props). We were throwing ideas around and then Yunusa came up with the idea of having someone come on stage and mirror Izzy themselves, so it could simply represent the mirror. Andy decided to have me, the other Lucy in the play, be the mirror, and it looks really good. Having done that I then simply go back and join the line along the back of the stage.

Dracula 10

Why is it you always chat and giggle during exercises?

I feel like the class is particularly terrible with chatting and giggling. Personally, I do try to be silent and respectful in warm ups and group work. I admit, I do sometimes slip up and allow myself to get distracted however I am often – almost to the point of being really annoying to the class – trying to get people to focus and work harder. I think that certain groups/individuals urge each other on and make each other worse, through in jokes and general lack of concentration. Often people seem to forget that boyfriends, gossip, Facebook arguments etc do not exist within the drama studio. I feel like there is a rather big degree of the amount feeling self conscious of looking silly in some of the exercises we do, and I think that people use humour to brush it off which is obviously not helpful whatsoever for the group. I did, a few weeks ago whilst we were doing a self directed introduction to Dracula, initiate a group discussion about the attitude about focus and talking, explaining how much I felt that it was important for u s all to start properly working as a team and focusing on the job, especially since we’d need to work twice as hard on Dracula as the other productions. Backed by a few members of the group, I explained how much i hated the fact that people were constantly giggling, talking and generally being unfocused, and also how difficult it was to get everyone in a group together for rehearsal in a lesson, let alone get people motivated enough to turn up for rehearsals outside of class.

Whilst the group was, at the time, very receptive it clearly has not had much effect. I feel like this is a very serious problem, I do have a natural instinct to try to push people I’m working with to be better (yes, I have been made fully aware by my siblings, Max and Liam that it is more like being bossy!), and I do work incredibly hard both in class and out and it’s very disappointing to have my work not met by other members of the class in regards to focus and attention. I do know that I can sometimes slip myself but I do try very hard to keep focus up and it’s very annoying to have it be such a problem with in the class. I feel like for half the people in the class this is their passion, their life. They want to carry on to drama school/university and make a living out of this. For others, it's clear they want to act but clearly don't consider the class to be helpful enough for their career to commit to focusing and working at their best. Then for the rest, well they just don't seem to think it's important whatsoever. I understand that not everyone in the group is planning on going to RADA and becoming the most renowned actor in the country but I feel like there could at least be the decency to not waste everyone else's time. I think there needs to be a stricter way of dealing with this, if not immediately then certainly when considering people to come back next year. I don't want to have to work with people who are spoiling really important exercises with giggling and joking around and only doing things at 30% because they're too busy checking Facebook on their phone.

Why do you always have to be reminded to stand in neutral, wear correct clothing, tie hair back etc

Again, I do consider myself to be quite on top of things in regards to being ready standing in neutral, having hair off my face and being in the correct clothing. I often bring in my hippie/harem pants and dungarees and get changed into them before the lesson, until now I was working under the assumption that my dungarees are appropriate as they are baggy, comfortable and easy to work in, however if this is not the case then please do let me know. 

Why is this all so important regarding your acting?

Professionalism! Basic professionalism, if you turn up late to an acting job in inappropriate clothing, with your hair in your face and giggle through the first 10 minutes of the job you’ll get fired. Simple as that. Also, if you can’t even do a 5 minute exercise without giggling ridiculously then you clearly don’t have the self control and simple confidence to get up in front of an audience and act to your fullest. You’ll constantly be trapped inside your own head and won’t be totally free as an actor, and won’t reach your full potential.

Dracula 9

Lord Of The Flies

Whilst reading through the play, I came across a quote by Grice where she's talking bout Renfield and refers to him as "Lord of the sodding flies". This got me thinking and I decided to reread the novel, Lord Of The Flies by William Golding.

The main plot of Lord Of The Flies is a group of boys marooned on an island having to set up their own mini-democracy, however the group is soon divided into the hunt and the hunted. Now, the main theme of the book is mankind's conflicting impulses towards civilisation, which brings to mind Artaud's views on this subject. Indeed, the book really supports his ideas, the basic laws of civilisation are soon lost on the boys as they descend into barbaric and basic primal instincts.

One of the first things that starts to tear apart the group is the belief of the boys that there is a "Beast" that exists somewhere on the island. Of course this completely relates to Dracula. I found this so interesting, especially since that is something that tears apart the characters in the play. Those who have that weakness and may let him in and those that don't. 

When one of the boys, Jack, decides to separate from the main group led by Ralph, he decides to set up a new camp at Castle Rock, where the beast resides. This of course matches Dracula's own castle. They recruit new members by holding a fest and performing rituals, painting their faces and giving sacrifices to the beast. This is so connected to the work we've been doing on Artaud and that which we've been planning on using in our performance of Dracula. 

Then, there is a boy who is possibly epileptic who wanders off and finds the head of a pig, a sacrifice for the Beast, however he envisions it being the Beast itself and names it the Lord Of The Flies, due to the flies which are now buzzing around it. The Lord Of The Flies tells the boy that the Beast never existed, that the group created it and that the real Beast is inside them all. This is so eye opening. It makes me see Dracula and the evil so clearly. The idea that Dracula, whilst being a real thing in the play, is simply a physical form of the evil that exists in all humans. It's shown, he is the taboos we try to suppress. Temptation, lust, desire, everything we fear most about ourselves and try to push down and out of our conscious thought. He is all of that. it's incredible.

The fact that Liz Lochhead has included this in the play is fabulous, it's so clever and I feel like it cements everything I've interpreted about the book and the play up until now.

Dracula 8

Final responses from read through

Act 1, Scene 13:

• Lucy has succumbed to lust/temptation and allows Dracula to come to her, this ties in with Artaud's ideas of subconcious desires being crushed down by civilisation and Dracula's role in the play
• Jonathan is symbolic of these oppressions
• Renfield is a free spirit, he is now free from the above desires
• Dracula is releasing people from the taboos, allowing them to be free to do what they want, highly symbolic!

Act 2, Scene 1:

• Van Helsing is introduced
• He knows of Dracula and what he truly is, he knows how to fight him and recognises the signs

Act 2, Scene 2:

• Lucy told Florrie to go to her sweetheart, Jem, who has now been killed in action and Florrie is pregnant
• Incest! This is a taboo and there's a definite sign that Lucy and her father's relationship was incestuous, this only comes to light when Lucy is almost at death's door. 
• Huge  importance in my development of the character, also to Artaud's ideas about taboos and breaking the seal that suppresses these

Act 2, Scene 3:

• Grice Lord of the Flies reference
• Will go into more depth in a separate blog entry
• Talks about Renfield going to Carfax, Dracula's newly bought property
• Religious quote, says "Religious ones are the worst", crosses and other religious symbols are used to ward off Dracula, interesting...

Jonathan Harker - symbol of Victorian values, suppressed desires

Arthur Seward - symbolic of science, modernity

Dracula 7

Brighton Shed Productions workshop

Today we had some people come in from the Brighton Shed productions to do a workshop with us.After they had spoken a little about their ethos and ideas, they took us to the dance studio and went through the workshop. The session comprised mainly of working with the ideas of journeys and travelling. First, in pairs, we had to develop a short travelling sequence across the room incorporating lifts and other techniques we'd been shown by the Shed Productions team. Then each pair would partner up with another pair, Heta and I were placed with Max and Liam, and we had to think of a story about travelling to Brighton. Our group chose Heta's story of travelling from Finland to the USA and then to Britain. Having devised 3 small tableaux telling the story, we put it together with the travelling sequences we'd made and presented to the whole class. I think it happened to tie in really well with Dracula, since journeys - both emotional and physical - are a huge motif in the play.

How can we use Artaud's ideas in Dracula?

After the workshop the group had a full discussion about Dracula and we spoke a lot about symbolism. We noted that there was a great  sense of travel, not only the actual travel between England and Transylvania by Jonathan and around England by the rest of the characters, but also there were lots of personal journeys. As I will be playing Lucy I noted that she goes through a huge journey, completely changing as a character throughout the play. There's also the symbol of lust/touching/sex, which of course hugely ties in symbolically with the ideas of temptation and taboos in the play. 

How can we start the play?

Following on from the discussion about symbolism, we then asked ourselves "Well how can we start the play?" As theatre makers we can do anything, the world is our playground - if you'll excuse the pun - and we want to really scare the audience. First we thought about what's scary, what really gets us up at night, too afraid to cross the room to shut the door? Sound gets me. it's the creak of a floorboard of the whistle of the wind at night. We liked the idea of using breathing that we'd explored on Tuesday, and there were lots of ideas thrown around. Some people liked the idea of trying to drown out the breathing with music, however the most common idea was a sound scape. The general discussion was incredible, everyone was pitching ideas. We tried to focus on the symbols of the play: lust, temptation, obsession, sex, manipulation, penetration, seduction, taboos, animalistic - animalistic! Wolves! 

Final idea

We decided that the Front of House would actually be the start of the performance. The minute the audience steps into the building, they are met by FOH dressed as villagers. They wouldn't allow the audience in until the last minute, acting scary and strange, finally leading the audience into the auditorium with lanterns. The room would be dark and possibly even the sound of wind playing. The scene would start off with a blackout and heavy breathing from all of us. Chloe will run onstage, panicked, then start to run up the 1st set of stairs to the the back of the stage. As she does this, the rest of the group, as wolves, will slowly advance growling with the exception of Max, Heta, Harry and myself who will be waiting off stage at the back corners of the top stage. Chloe, clocking the wolves runs up the rest of the bottom set of steps and sees Harry, Max, Heta and myself who by now have come on stage, also growling. She is blocked, surrounded, looking up she see Greta as Count Dracula, smiling. There is a moment of silence before the wolves jump on Chloe and devour her as she screams. Chloe then becomes one of the wolves and we turn to face the audience, as if only just becoming aware of them, and slowly advance, growling. Then as one we all run in attack towards the audience as the lights blackout.

Dracula 6

Start up exercise

Today we started off with the same exercise we began the lesson with a week ago with the instruments in a circle, however there was one key difference: we had to run it ourselves. It started off with us all sat in a circle unsure of what to do, however eventually Yunusa took initiative and stood up and everyone followed suit. At first there were only 2 or 3 people swapping the role of trying out new beats and leading the group however as people became more confident and inspired it became more of a communal exercise. It took loads of complicity and simple, silent communication to make it work, but it felt so much better than a week ago. I felt like us having to do the work and leading meant that everyone had to work harder, some on focusing on the entire group so they'd understand what was happening, some learning to take the responsibility of stepping forward and leading the group which may be out of their comfort zone, and arguably the even greater responsibility of some to actually step back - I particularly felt this was something I needed to work on - and let others lead. 

Workshop

We were split into pairs and told to devise an epic, huge argument without using a single word. I was placed with Liam, which was good because I feel like we work well together. He inspires ideas in me just as much as I inspire ideas in him. We decided that our argument should be the kind that you have right at the end of a relationship, the final argument, where it's so epic and so long that you lose every ounce of self control you once had and end up forgetting what you were fighting about in the first place. I decided to incorporate the Silent Scream, which has always helped me work with the physicality of pain, both facially and in my full body. Behind me Liam would be using things like groans and breathing to build up the anger "vibe" whilst I simply screamed and rocked in complete silence. Then I started crying and panting before pushing him away and he would laugh. I slap him, he pushes me away and I start to scrabble at him, holding him and trying to keep him close before he pushes me down. The scene ends with me once again on the floor, crying and lying still as the tension slowly drops. 

We had to perform this in front of the class and in the moment, as I pulled Liam close,the word "Please" escaped my lips almost as part of my breathe. It was involuntary and a reaction, however Andy commented on the fact that we could now employ one word in our scenes. When we were working on them again I used more vocal reaction to Liam, screaming at my own frustration and at him, no words just animalistic screaming. He would then laugh and it was so frustrating. Even though we were acting, feeling that much emotion being expelled from my body and seeing him just laugh literally made me want to slap him, and when he pushed me down I went flying across the floor and let my body go with it, allowing myself to just lie there trying to recover from the shock of it. 

This exercise really showed me the raw, helpless, uncontrollable emotion you can feel as an actor working in this style. It was so effecting and I genuinely felt shaken and overwhelmed by the end of the lesson. It was also so moving watching other people's pieces. For example Harry and Sav had a scene and at the end Sav was lying, whimpering and sobbing on the floor as Harry held her down by her neck, shouting and howling in her face. Seeing that, feeling the energy pumping out of the scene like an Aurora of emotion, made me realise how heavily this style can affect you. It was so much stronger than if they'd run around shouting endless, empty words at one another for 30 seconds. I felt my stomach drop and my hands reached up to cover my eyes but some how I couldn't.

I think that this style is so deeply affecting, not just on the basic emotional sense but in this indescribable way that makes you feel like clawing your eyeballs out but also like it's something you want to watch forever, I think it will be so incredible to incorporate it into Dracula.

Castings

We also got cast for our roles at the end of the lesson, and I was cast as Lucy. In all honesty she was one of the characters that I was least interested in playing. Partially because I felt  so inspired by so many of the other characters, but also because I feel that I've played her before. I can easily be type-casted as the kind of girl Lucy is, often pretty, lively, young, sometimes spoilt, the lovely damsel of the show. I enjoy it sometimes, however over the last 4 or 5 shows I've been involved in - some in college, others not - where I've been cast by a director, it's been as those kinds of girls. In Dracula, however, I do recognise that the part of Lucy's story which I will be portraying will be the most fun one. She has been bitten by Dracula, she is succumbing to her animalistic temptations, brimming with rampant sexual desire and pure madness. Reading through the part I'd been given is that there's a part of her which is kind of like the female Renfield, and I'd love to take her to the full extreme of an animal, insane and completely embodying sex and madness. 

Dracula 5

Antonin Artaud 

Whilst reading The Theatre And It's Double, by Antonin Artaud, I came upon a section where he discusses a painting by the Middle Age artist Lucas van Den Leyden called Lot and his Daughters and how it relates to language on the stage.

He explains how his first glance at the painting "affects the mind with an almost thunderous visual harmony", and that it raises an awareness of great importance within the painting. This shows how just looking at something can raise such an emotional reaction and awareness without the use of language. He then goes on to explore this and question whether language on the stage is even necessary to convey thoughts and messages. 

He claims that, in Western theatre as we know it [at the time of him writing the book] everything that we can't express through speech is left in the background, and that it is only considered "theatre" if there is dialogue. He states that the stage is a physical space asking to be filled and to be given it's own language to speak, and that this language is intended for the senses. According to Artaud there is a poetry of the senses, just as there is written and spoken poetry of dialogue, and that spoken language is unable to properly express the thoughts and emotions that the actor is trying to convey, so we must instead use the language of the senses and physicality. He also says that, when working with an audience and trying to reach them through theatre, instead of trying to reach the mind you should try to reach the senses first and let the intellectual levels come about later.

This language he talks of is made up of everything that can be created on the stage that addresses the senses and emotions, as opposed to addressing the mind which is what language does. This actually makes perfect sense because language, whilst being beautiful and expansive and incredibly useful, primarily affects the mind. You hear something and you think "Oh yes, lovely phrasing, wonderful metaphor, I totally agree with you", however it doesn't really hit your gut and your heart and your soul the way other things can. For example, hearing someone say "Her baby was crying and wailing, it was a heartbreaking sound" doesn't make your gut twist and flop the same way the actual, simple sound of a baby's crying does. 

However, I don't quite understand how we can use this concept of less talking in the play of Dracula as it is a scripted play where we'll be abiding by the script. I imagine we'll instead make use of the "poetry of the senses" concept by incorporating ritual, movement and other noises such as breathing and non linguistic voice. 

Dracula 4

Antonin Artaud

[to be written up at college]

The exercises we did today

Starter exercise

Today when we walked into the classroom, Andy had set out a circle of small instruments such as bells, wooden sticks and such and we were told to silently put down our bags and sit beside an instrument. When we were all sat down Andy picked up his own instrument and began to shake it in a steady beat. He motioned for us to follow suit and then proceeded to conduct something that was almost a ritual, walking around the room with all of us playing our instruments to a range of beats. It reminded me of a pagan ritual ro something, dancing around making no noise but the beat of our instruments. When we finished we all sat down, still in complete silence, and allowed ourselves to feel the silence. I felt very meditative, it felt like we're were still in part of the ritual, and we all shared how we felt about it, using a single word to explain how we felt. I could feel the energy of everyone around me and I felt so revitalized, like when you've just taken a long drink of cold water on a boiling hot day and you can feel it rushing through your body and filling you with energy.

Grid exercise

This exercise was demonstrating Artaud's philosophy of "Be cruel to yourself". Andy has us visualize a grid on the floor and walk along the lines as if "The possibility of being loved is what is pulling you". It started out fairly simple however the more into it I got the more emotional I felt. It got to a point where I felt desperate and powerless, I was rushing and bumping into people, unable to thing straight and feeling completely overwhelmed. My heart and mind were racing and I felt like I could shatter into a million pieces any minute and finally Andy said "Slow down". As I slowed I felt my emotions slowly overpower me and by the time I came to a stop I was crying. I felt so emotionally drained and like I had hundreds of emotions surging through me. I don't know why I felt so emotionally struck my the exercise or why I reacted that way, perhaps it was the idea of chasing love. When I was doing the exercise I pictured my family. My mum, my dad, my brother and sisters. It felt like the faster and harder I went in the exercise the further away they got and then I realised that I couldn't actually picture my youngest sister Miki's face. I felt like the exercise symbolised my life, with my family so far away and me chasing my dreams and living my new, independent life. However sometimes I feel like I miss so much. Every time I go back down to Devon they've all grown and changed so much and it's very difficult. Perhaps it was something else. I don't know. I think it was an incredible exercise though, I'm glad I got so much out of it and it really demonstrated what Artaud is trying to do with his ideas. I think that reaching that level of emotion and feeling that stripped back, and being that cruel to yourself is necessary in the style that we're working on. It's necessary to feel like that yourself before you can make the audience feel the same way.

Slow Motion & Emotions

The point of this exercise was to show the size of performance needed in this style. Many Theatre of Cruelty performances are supposed to be in huge spaces or even outdoors, and to be able to convey a performance in such an expansive environment you do need to make your acting size bigger. Also, however, you need to be bigger than usual because you're trying to make the audience feel very extreme things. You can't go half way, you need to be at 900%, if you act half way then the audience will only feel half way. This exercise helped us develop these techniques, as well as highlighting the need for trust, control and focus. The emotions exercise did the same thing, showing us how some things make us feel so much more and quicker than others.

Ritual

This exercise was so much fun, we had to create a war dance. When we first started to make it people were being really technical and trying to map out the whole thing however I didn't feel like that was the point. We weren't supposed to make a perfect piece of movement, we were supposed to make a war dance which should be both scary and pump someone up for war. We started beating our sticks together in time and I felt a sort of grunt or chant come up, and people started to join in. We just did this, using volume and pace, getting faster and faster and screeching and howling. When we performed it we started dancing around the other group, running around them pulling horrific faces and screeching and beating our instruments and the other group said that there were some times when they felt genuinely terrified. I think this is so cool, it showed that going "I am absolutely terrifying, I'm going to hurt you, raaahhhh!!!" is so much less effecting than simple beats and noises and facial expressions. 

Dracula 3

Research on Vampire Mythology

Vampires date back to the Dark Ages when, in the absence of science, people turned to religion and superstition to explain the world around them. In fact, at one point in Europe superstition surrounding vampires was so rife there were actually public executions of those thought to be vampires, much like the witch burnings. However this was during the 18th century, mainly thanks to European superstition and Bram Stoker himself that the term "Vampire" was coined, it is said that "Vampire" translated is "Dragon". Elizabeth Barthory (1560 - 1614) who was a Countess in Hungary was thought to have bathed in virgin's blood and feasted on human flesh, thinking it would make her look younger and retain her beauty. 

However, it's thought that these superstitions were brought over to Europe from afar, as there are legends of blood feasting demons in other cultures from long before these times. For example the Egyptian goddess Sekhmet had a part of her soul called Ka which was said to emerge from her tomb and drink the blood of mortals if she felt she had not received adequate offerings. There are also stories in the Greek Mythology of the first vampire being born from a mixture of blessings and curses from various Greek Gods. Christians believed that vampires were demons - not the devil however - and therefor enemies of God. The earliest accounts of such beast in stories related to the Bible come from Hebrew texts that told of Lilith. She was supposedly the first wife of Adam, before Eve, however she was banished from the Garden of Eden by God. She then became the Queen of the Demons and would feast on the blood of babies and mothers. Parents would hang amulets and crosses over their baby's cradles to ward her off - perhaps this is the root of the myth about crosses being able to repel vampires. She was thought to be bird footed and a sexual predator, and "Lilith" translated from Hebrew means "night hag", "screech owl", "night monster" etc. Many ancient stories of vampires depict them as women, harlots or infertile who drink the blood of babies and are sexual predators.

Dracula 2

Today we began our read through and read from Chapter 1 to Chapter 9, pausing at the end of each chapter to discuss what we made of it.

Chapter 1: 

Lucy and Mina reminded some members of the group a little of Mrs Marshall and Mrs Farley. Lucy is flirtatious and childish, teasing and giggling and enjoying the fact that men enjoy her. Mina is more solemn however still beautiful and fully aware of it. They instantly set of the idea of temptation. Lucy teasing Mina about tempting her fiance by letting him catch her in her under garments. This scene may strike one as relatively trivial however if you keep in mind the theme of "Temptation" then I think it's of vital importance.

Chapter 2:

Introduces the character of Renfield, a madman. Also introduces the idea of something else, otherworldly, out of the current plot of the book. Introduces the theme of murder and flesh eating with Renfield catching a fly and eating it. 

Chapter 3:

Seward and Jonathan were in private school together, with Seward being Jonathan's senior and the latter being the former's "Fag", otherwise known as an errand boy. Now, the dynamic is switched with Seward working in an asylum, successful but lonely with Jonathan engaged to a beautiful woman with a good inheritance. There is an underlying sense of tension between the two to do with these switched roles. Yet again temptation and lust is hinted at when the two men discuss Jonathan's secretary, and Jonathan invited Seward to Mina and Lucy's home for a holiday.

Chapter 4:

Nurse Grice is abusing Renfield, treating him as a dog and an animal, Renfield also mentions his "Master" for the first time.

Chapter 5:

Lust, Jonathan cops a feel of Mina. Lucy has an emotional outburst and hints at mental illness/tendancies, Mina mentions her nervous disposition however Seward declines medical opinion before announcing he and Lucy are in fact engaged. Jonathan comforts Mina before begging they get married the next day and asking to "Come to her" that night, once again lust and temptation! 

Chapter 6:

Nurse Nisbett is abusing Renfield in the same way as Nurse Grice did. Once again there is a motif of animals, treating him like a dog and abusing him, taunting him. 

Scene 7:

Dracula is seen for the first time in Transylvania where Jonathan has traveled to. Jonathan and Dracula discuss Mina and Lucy with Jonathan showing Dracula a photograph of the two and Dracula commenting on how similar Lucy looks to the girls of his own country. Moving onto their country Dracula calls it a "Whirlpool of blood", however he does not talk in a negative way, indeed he seems almost reverent of the country's bloody history. Jonathan comments on how Dracula talks of war as if he had actually been there, well of course Dracula HAS been! Dracula enticed Jonathan to stay a month longer than intended and wolves are heard howling as the night gets on. Jonathan seems almost hypnotised by them. 

Scene 8:

Florrie is a maid at Lucy and Mina's home, however she does not appear in Bram Stoker's original book. She reminds me a lot of Doll in Playhouse Creatures, she is not significant in such a way as other characters are, however she is there to make a social point. In this case it's to show up the hypocrisy of Mina and Lucy and of their class in general. 

Scene 9:

TEMPTATION! Dracula's wives enotice and terrify Jonathan, sexual predators, Jonathan is in thrall. However Dracula drags them back. They exchange heated words about love, all as cold as each other, before Dracula tosses them a bag in which the squalls of a baby can be heard and they hurry off. 

Dracula 1

Today we were introduced to the play Dracula, which will be our piece for our next performance. We watched the 1931 film interpretation directed by Tod Browning and starring Bela Lugosi as the title character. This version was one of the first original film interpretations of the stage play written in 1924 by Hamilton Dean and John Baldeston, which in turn was based on the novel of the same name, written by Bram Stoker in the 1890's. We were told to look for certain features, including:

• What's their take on the style/look?
• What's the style of acting?

We were also told to think about how we could use this in our own interpretation of another stage play of Dracula, written by Liz Lochhead. 

What's their take on the style/look?

The costumes in the film hinted to a setting in the 1920's/30's, which would have been current day at the time the film was made, as opposed to the original book setting of around 1893, and all of the characters were dressed in blacks and whites - or at least largely contrasting colours from what we could make out of the grainy black and white picture. All of the ladies were in pure, lovely white dresses which led to an idea of mine to have colours represent people's character through black and white, then Sophie raised the idea of having "Marked" people splashed with something red, like a scarf or something.

The lighting in the film was also really cool, it often shadowed all of the actor's face except from their eyes which the group was really inspired by. Ideas were tossed around such as using face paint to do the same thing, also using really washed out lighting with little colour. Max picked up on the sound, noting on how there was constant noise due to the age of the film, and he was inspired by this to have possibly have constant noise in our piece with it cutting out  when something bad is about to happen, since silence is often far more "creepy" when it's contrasted with noise.

Style of acting

One thing that I really picked up on was hands. Whenever a vampire was about to creep out of a coffin, these deathly pale and sinister hands would always appear first and I personally found it absolutely terrifying. I thought that so much more could be made of that idea, for example at the beginning of the piece we could just have hands appearing first as everyone comes on stage. Perhaps people emerging from underneath the trapdoor next to the stage, having hands wriggling about and twisting and crawling, with people following, I thought it had such a chilling effect and gave me so many inspirations!

Another thing that I thought was really effective was the use of silhouettes, things like lighting, smoke machines and dark clothing meant that seeing the shadow and silhouette of a sinister character gave a really creepy look. I love the idea of playing around with shadows and silhouettes since they're such an iconic part of the old style of horror film. 

I noticed that the more evil/sinister characters had these huge facial expressions. Of course it may just be dated acting but I definitely noticed it more in Dracula and Renfield than in Harker or Van Helsing or Mina. I think that it made them seem more unnatural and weird, unknown and therefor dangerous and creepy. It was really cool to see the contrast between these really absurd, abnormal characters and expressions when placed in contrast with relatively natural/realistic characters.

The group also had an idea to help draw the audience in and make them feel genuinely creeped out which was to make use of Front Of House and have them be part of the world. They could either village folk, warning the audience not to enter the theatre and blessing them or have them actually act like members of Dracula's house, properly creeped out in full character and making the audience feel really uncomfortable as they entered. I think that makes it so much more real and scary and I love the idea of theatre not just being someone sitting down and watching a play then going for a cuppa in the college cafe, but actually transporting them to a world where they really experience the happenings and feeling part of it.

Research on Dracula by Bram Stoker

The novel Dracula is set in Transylvania, so my first task was to find out where the country actually is. "Sylvania" is derived from Latin "To do with forests" , and the area is situated in the mountainous, wooded area of central Romania. This is probably the extent of Stoker's knowledge of the country, as what would be a few hours plane journey today was several weeks journey for him. The world was far bigger and geographical accuracy was not high on Stoker's list of priorities. However, he got much of the description of the land fairly accurate.

The novel Dracula was written in 1897 and had a British audience, the same audience that would have read Sherlock Holmes, Dickens etc. Now at the time the levels of literally were at their highest, although today we would consider them appalling. This was largely in the middle to upper classes however, the lower classes were still working away in the factories, so Stoker's audience would have been these readers. The true upper classes would have been reading the classics such as Homer and the like, and Stoker was simply writing to entertain and make a living. His real audience would have been the middle classes, much like the one in J. B. Priestley's An Inspector Calls; financially secure but with no heritage or true wealth, social climbers.