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.

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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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.