It all began one sunny afternoon at the gym. I was being very manly and pushing heavy weights up and down and back and forth. All of a sudden, I realize that Darren was in the gym! I smoothly set my current weight down and sauntered over to say hi. We chatted for a bit, mostly making fun of meeting in the gym, when Darren got this too large grin on his face and said, “I’ve got this great idea: Dracula!”
And now, over a year later, we’re in the final rehearsal stage for PUSH’s re-telling of Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
Our version of Dracula departs from the original novel for mostly practical reasons. We don’t have the numbers to fill out Stokers’ main cast, much less all the supporting roles. We also don’t have a good way of staging a weeks-long cross-European chase with trains and boats. At least, no way that wouldn’t leave the audience catatonic from intense boredom.
The central liberty we’ve taken with the story is to tell it from the perspective of the madman Renfield. In Stoker’s novel, Renfield is a sort of motion sensor for Dracula, his actions parallel Dracula’s movement and desires. Renfield also serves a crucial plot point by becoming the weak link in the defense of the asylum he is housed inside. A local writer/actor and friend of ours, Danny Hoskins, wrote and speaks Renfield’s part on stage with us as we alternately become his nightmares, fantasies and actual characters.
(YouTube doesn’t seem to be working with me today. Video’s are here.)
On the spiritual side of things, Dracula is an interesting story to tell. There have been a lot of sidelong glances from many church friends who ask “Why Dracula? Isn’t it all about EVIL?” The short answer is: yes it is. Our ‘Dracula’ is a story about absolute evil. In a society where morality is more of an opinion than a standard, we felt this would be a particularly compelling idea. It breaks the social norm and makes our vampire story a bit different what pop culture is producing. It’s a conversation point, which is what we always hope will occur when people watch PUSH perform.
We’re pretty excited about Dracula, if you couldn’t tell. This is by far the biggest project we’ve ever worked on – the show is almost an hour long. It’s also a chance for us to merge the many worlds PUSH draws our art form from. The narrative of Dracula draws out our classical story-telling mime background. The horror element allows us to indulge the more extreme movement training. There’s even a moment where I get to bring out some of my old circus training and hang from the ceiling.
We’ve got more videos and pictures up on our Facebook page if you want to take a look (which I’m sure you do). We’re using social networking pretty heavily for this show, so there will be plenty of updates before the show goes up.
As Chad Miller very diplomatically reminded me recently, I should write a bit more often than I have recently (a relative term). Chad has always been good at getting me to discipline myself to write things down, and he hasn’t lost his touch. I don’t really mind, because in this case I do want to communicate.
Our company got back into our regular studio routine, but we were in earnest rehearsals for our Geva run which started at the end of the month. Adding to the stress were the displacement of one of the company from her apartment via basement fire and smoke damage and the end of the year crunch of school performances. Johanna (the fire displace-ee) was also working on costumes for our Dracula trailer, so she lost a lot of time by being evicted from her own space.
So this is the big event that ended May and began June. Honestly, I’m still not really sure how it got to be so far into June… Or am I surprised it’s still June? I can’t remember.
You wouldn’t expect the average fourth-grader to be familiar with neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran’s laws of art.
Part of the program’s success has to do with where the fourth-graders are developmentally: They’re physically strong and capable of self-control, but they haven’t yet fallen into the self-consciousness of adolescence.
There are two weeks left in my first year with PUSH. On June 5th we start a short run at a theatre in Rochester followed by two days of regular shows. This takes us to June 10th, which is marked on my calendar as the last day of the Trainee program.
*Ahem* The segue was SUPPOSED to mention how I felt like that trip put an endcap on my experience here. With all the maturing and changing I’ve experienced, going home felt like I was trying to act like another person. I wasn’t, but the general expectations from people who haven’t seen much of me for almost a year were disconcerting.