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Dracula the Articles in This Study Guide Are Not Meant to Mirror Or Interpret Any Productions at the Utah Shakespeare Festival Insights A Study Guide to the Utah Shakespeare Festival Dracula The articles in this study guide are not meant to mirror or interpret any productions at the Utah Shakespeare Festival. They are meant, instead, to be an educational jumping-off point to understanding and enjoying the plays (in any production at any theatre) a bit more thoroughly. Therefore the stories of the plays and the interpretative articles (and even characters, at times) may differ dramatically from what is ultimately produced on the Festival’s stages. The Study Guide is published by the Utah Shakespeare Festival, 351 West Center Street; Cedar City, UT 84720. Bruce C. Lee, communications director and editor; Phil Hermansen, art director. Copyright © 2011, Utah Shakespeare Festival. Please feel free to download and print The Study Guide, as long as you do not remove any identifying mark of the Utah Shakespeare Festival. For more information about Festival education programs: Utah Shakespeare Festival 351 West Center Street Cedar City, Utah 84720 435-586-7880 www.bard.org. Cover photo: Jamie Ann Romero (left) as Lucy and Tyler Pierce as Dracula in Dracula, 2015. Contents Information on the Play Synopsis 4 Characters Dracula 5 Playwright 6 Scholarly Articles on the Play The Changing Legend of the Vampire 8 Utah Shakespeare Festival 3 351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880 Synopsis: Dracula By Marlo Ihler The play’s prologue is delivered by Renfield, who at first is well-dressed and erudite, but soon reveals himself as a madman. The play begins with lifelong friends Mina and Lucy sharing secrets about the men in their lives. Mina is engaged to be married to Jonathan Harker, a solicitor who is away on a business trip in the Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania. Lucy reveals that she has had three separate marriage proposals and doesn’t know which one to accept. One of Lucy’s suitors, Dr. Seward, comes to call and divulges his deep feelings for her, but she sweetly rebuffs him and, to distract him from heartache, he turns to his work of unlocking the mys- tery of Renfield’s lunacy. Meanwhile, Harker’s letters to Mina depict, at first, Count Dracula and Transylvania as exciting and mysterious, but later become nightmarish and fearful. Eventually he stops writing. It is then that Mina begins to notice Lucy’s behavior has become strange and worrisome and sends for Dr. Seward to make a diagnosis. He is unsure of what might be the problem, but finds an unusual mark on her neck. Lucy has no memory of her strange actions and becomes deathly ill over the course of just a few days. Dr. Seward has an odd encounter with someone who says he is Harker, but Mina discovers Harker is actually in a hospital in Budapest. She goes to him and finds him deeply changed and traumatized. He tells her he cannot remember what happened to him but that the secret lies in his journal, if she feels she must know. Lucy’s health becomes worse, so Dr. Seward sends for his friend and mentor, Abraham Van Helsing. He recognizes the mark on her neck as vampire bites, but keeps the information to him- self. He gives Lucy a life-saving blood transfusion from Dr. Seward. Mina brings Harker home to recover. She and Van Helsing read his journal and discover that Dracula hypnotized him to do his bidding while in Transylvania. It also reveals how Dracula stole Harker’s identity to further his purpose of securing a new location in London. Fortunately Harker makes a full recovery, and Lucy is brought to the asylum for protection. Renfield begs Seward to let him out of the asylum, claiming he is cured from insanity. He also fears his “master” and his plan and he tries to warn the others. Later, Van Helsing finally delineates his theory of vampires and the Un-Dead, into which, tragically, Lucy has been fully transformed. Van Helsing tells Dr. Seward and Harker what they must do to rid her soul of this darkness: drive a stake through her heart and sever her head. He also cautions them of the “strange and terrible days ahead.” Now in England, Dracula begins to wreak unrest on the citizens of London, including Mina. But can Van Helsing, Dr. Seward, and Harker locate Dracula and destroy him in time to save other souls? Is Renfield really as sane as he says? Can Mina resist the same horrible fate as Lucy and final- ly be married to Harker, putting this ghastly experience behind them? 4 Utah Shakespeare Festival 351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880 Characters: Dracula Mina Murray: A young woman in her early twenties, Mina is engaged to Jonathan Harker. Jonathan Harker: Mina’s fiancé, Jonathan is a solicitor and away on business when the play begins. Lucy Westenra: Mina’s friend, Lucy is also in her early twenties. She has marriage proposals from at least three different men, but soon falls strangely ill. Dr. John Seward: One of Lucy’s suitors, Dr. Seward is head of a lunatic asylum. Renfield: A madman at Seward’s asylum Abraham Van Helsing: A scientist and friend of Seward’s, Van Helsing eventually diagnoses the troubles surrounding Lucy. Dracula: A strange and mysterious count from Transylvania Waiters, Attendants, Maid, Vixens Utah Shakespeare Festival 5 351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880 Novelist and Playwright: Bram Stoker and Steven Dietz By Don Leavitt Steven Dietz might possibly be the most prolific playwright you’ve never heard of. In a career that has spanned more than thirty years, Dietz has published more than forty plays, an impressive body of work comprised of both adaptations and original pieces. Since 1983, his work has been a staple of regional theatres around the world, and in 2010, he ranked eighth in a list of the top ten most produced playwrights in America. Among his most produced and most profitable plays is his adaptation of Bram Stoker’s gothic classic Dracula, a work that Dietz was initially reluctant to attempt. “I thought the book had been captured quite well in a number of other adaptations,” he said. However, reading the novel again inspired him. “I became very surprised at the extent to which so many theatre adaptations veered a great distance from the book,” he said (http://www.playbill.com/news/article/no-bloodless-metaphors-for-steven-dietz-new-dracula-69814). Dietz’s version closely follows the plot of the original novel, although he does take the opportunity to play with the novel’s timeline and structure. More importantly, Dietz manages to avoid the campiness and self-parody that plagues other versions, choosing instead to remain faithful to the character and situations that Stoker created. “My friends kept asking what my ‘take’ on the story was . what did Dracula ‘represent’?” Dietz said. “I realized that to make Dracula a metaphor was cheating” (Playbill.com, no-bloodless-meta- phors). Dietz took “Mr. Stoker at his word” and treated the actual being of Dracula as the most haunting part of the story. “You can hide from a metaphor. A metaphor doesn’t wait outside your window under a full moon. A metaphor doesn’t turn into a bat and land on your bed,” he said. “The question, then, is not what Dracula represents, but what he is: a brilliant, seductive, fanged beast waiting to suck the blood from your throat” (Playbill.com, no-bloodless-metaphors). Dietz counts Dracula as one of just a handful of his works that have been the most financially successful, despite the fact that none of his plays has been produced on Broadway. “I’m fond of saying that maybe I’ve inverted the old adage that you can make a killing [in the theatre] but you can’t make a living,” Dietz told Playbill Online in 2004. “I’ve done the exact opposite: I’ve made a living on my plays for twenty some years. But I don’t have a hit play. Instead I’ve had fifteen or more plays that are seen in theatres and colleges—and then there are five or six that pay my bills” (http://www.playbill. com/celebritybuzz/article/playbill-on-lines-brief-encounter-with-steven-dietz-121020). This is something that Dietz shares in common with Stoker, who in his lifetime wrote a dozen novels, three short story collections, and nearly two dozen uncollected stories but remains most closely associated with Dracula. So deep is the association between Stoker and Dracula, people are often surprised to learn that he wrote any other stories. While many of his stories and novels have been critical successes, it is Dracula that has proven to be Stoker’s most enduring legacy, inspiring film and stage adaptations as well as countless imitations. Abraham “Bram” Stoker was born in 1847 near Dublin, Ireland, and despite suffering chronic, life-threatening illnesses as a young child, grew to be a large man and a successful athlete. He studied mathematics at Dublin’s Trinity College and developed a love of theatre that became a lifelong pursuit. Upon graduation, Stoker took a civil servant’s position at Dublin Castle and worked part-time as a theatre critic for the Dublin Evening Mail; this led to a friendship with the actor Henry Irving that would last through the rest of his life. At Irving’s request, Stoker moved to London and became manager of Irving’s Lyceum Theatre. 6 Utah Shakespeare Festival 351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880 This proved to be advantageous, because it introduced Stoker to Irving’s social circle and opened opportunities for Stoker’s personal writing to be taken seriously.
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