Interpretations of the play...
Bram Stoker wrote Dracula to portray lust, temptation and sexuality in a way that also scares the audience, it was the scariest novel around at the time and at an era of which death and afterlife were an interest, this era was known as the Victorian era.
My character in the play is Lucy, she is an “Innocent young girl” I use Innocent lightly as she portrays herself as innocent but she always saves questionable things that I believe are to affect her sister as I feel her sister is quite reserved and perhaps “Prude”, while Lucy is very open with her sexuality, she is initially brought up by her older sister as she lost her parents, so in a sense Mena (Her sister) Probably resents Lucy for taking away her childhood, but also as Lucy is her younger sister, she treats Lucy as a child, hence Lucy’s rather child-like characteristics.
Antoine Marie Joseph Artaud, otherwise known to us as Antonin Artaud or plainly just "Autaud" was born 4th September 1896 and then died 4th March 1948 , he was an established French playwriter , actor, theatre director and a poet. "Antonin is a diminutive form of Antoine (little Anthony)," this was one of his list of names which Artaud used throughout his writing career.
Autaud actually suffered from meningitis which plagued him throughout his early career. This unfortunately gave him nervousness, a terrible temper which I believe he used for his work, in particular "The theatre of cruelty" which he probably challenged himself with. He also struggled with sleepwalking.
This extract below gives in big detail very much of his work he did . "Artaud’s influence on theory and practice in the arts is substantial. As a playwright, director actor, film scenarist, poet, artist and critic he challenged existing modes of working and thinking in ways that are still generating considerable interest and debate. His iconoclastic work, which brings the affective body and its creative potential to the fore, has shaped artistic experiment and new modes of critical thinking and writing and substantial critical studies of Artaud have been written by Derrida, Deleuze and others. Diagnosed as clinically schizophrenic, Artaud’s writings and drawings are also of considerable interest to psychologists and art therapists. The event should bring together research students, theorists and practitioners from fields both within and outside the academy."
This clearly showed Autaud suffered from a serious mental illness "Schizophrenia" Which probably caused alot of mental pain towards him and struggle.
A page I found on Schizophrenia http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/schizophrenia/Pages/Introduction.aspx
As a schizophrenic, he would have likely suffered from hallucinations and therefore muddled thoughts or those people may have found odd, especially as in this era, Victorians were unaware of Schizophrenia.
My interpretation of what this play truly means is that, I think it portrays all of Victorian's hidden desires and perhaps why it became so popular is that everyone had these desires but weren't allowed to speak them and Dracula does just this, with a wide variety of euphemisms and symbols and sexuality portrayed in such a brilliant and effective way.
Dracula is both male and female to show human sexuality and I feel as since Victorian's were made to feel so uncomfortable about their sexuality, that is when Autaud's practises came in beautifully, it means they were immersed within this world that that they lust for but cannot speak of, Autaud played on people's uncomfort, hence Autauds "Cruelty of Theatre".
Sexuality Symbolisms:
Woman in this era were portrayed as classy, proper and sophisticated and exclude sexual tendancies or desires, but it is the underlying human nature and yet it is forbidden in this era? but this forbidden lust is what drives Lucy to continuously allow Dracula to feed off, which then brings on more symbolisms of sadism and masochism, someone of which derives pleasure from either inflicting or receiving pain off another individual.
It is also a brilliant play showing the adolescence of a young girl's journey into a woman, my character Lucy's super objectives I believe were, Lucy's super objective is I believe to seek the attention of Mina, as discussed before Mina treats her as a child therefore Lucy I feel (especially in this scene) Tries her best to show how grown up she is, that she has three men after her, this is scene in the quote "Why oh why can't a girl marry three men at once", this shows that Lucy is so grown up physically and mentally, that she has adult men trying to court her. Not only does this boost her self esteem, this is hopefully what she needs to prove to Mina that she is grown up and can be treated as such, despite playing to the sweet, innocent 7 year old girl she portrays herself to be.
There is a reassurance of Stanislavsky in theatre, as he practically revolutionised theatre. we had a couple of naturalistic scenes, for instance in scene 1 act 1 I played Lucy as a naturalistic young girl who acts younger than her age, her super objective in this scene was to show purity and youth, she skips around the stage as a young perhaps, 7 year old girl, this first scene is incredibly important as it displays the most of every scene the purity of youth and how naive young people are, a lack of worry for instance when Lucy picks up a flower and sings "Who shall I marry, Tom, Dick or Harry", she can afford to worry about such petty things as she has no other worries at this time. This signifies this.
In my next scene with Lucy we sat on the stage, Lucy I felt was still treated as a young girl even by Arthur her fiancée, when she says "Arthur", and he puts his finger to his lips for her to stop speaking, showing control on his half. Still keeping with the concept of Naturalism, this scene shows Lucy's super objective to show how someone can have so much control of another, Lucy is controlled not only by Arthur but Mina also, When Lucy finally gets a chance to speak and explain how worried she was when she could not see Arthur in "The heaving grey ocean", she gets shot down (Verbally) by Mina who accuses her of attention seeking, this angers Lucy as she storms off, she probably feels angry as she is never able to act adult, she was having the opportunity to sit down with the other adults and maybe for the first time ever felt accepted and able to act her age, this shows the power Mina has that she can effect Lucy in such a way so easily. Another view on this is that Lucy IS attention seeking, if this is the case, I believe that Lucy would only be doing so out of frustration that she is never listened to and just shrugged off like a child would be by her sister, which would explain (if she is) why she would attention seek so much.
The vampire brides is a brilliant contrast in comparison to that of the first scene act 1, as it shows the youth and purity of Lucy and all of a sudden she is a vampire bride she has lost her sacred virginity, another view on this could be that Victorians believed that to lose your virginity before marriage made you evil.
This scene moves away from Stanislavsky as it is in no way naturalistic, however the balance of Autaud's theatre of cruelty as this scene does make people feel very uncomfortable and Stanislavsky's naturalism in the past scene makes for a brilliant contrast.
Autaud wanted to represent people's true thoughts that they were afraid to say, he knew people had sexual fantasies, this was used a lot in this scene.
In one exercise we did, explaining Autaud and what the theatre of cruelty is we did the following...
We were told to stand in a line and were given an emotion to portray, the line on the opposite side of the room were given fear and portrayed it well, getting increasingly fearful towards the end of the line. Then it came to my line and we were given love, arguably at first I thought it was rediculous, I wondered how on earth could you portray such an emotion, it was coming up for my turn and all of a sudden I burst into tears, I felt so overwhelmed by the emotion, that I collapsed to the floor and couldn't stop crying, this definitely related to Autaud's exercise of "Theatre of cruelty", as I was doing something I felt uncomfortable with, I was pushing myself and I was very successful in this, another exercise was running around on "A grid", again on the same concept of "Theatre of cruelty", and we had to repeatedly run round the grid repetively, Andy said to imagine chasing someone you "Loved", however I felt this approach did not work for me, as everyone I love, loves me back, I understand the unrequited love but I have nothing in my life to relate it to, but could understand how it could work for other people.
I imagined a time of my life where I was trying to do something and imagined the repetitive cycle of this of which I was imagining, something that was tiring and painful and this worked for me, because I had an image in my head and I was running for it, I was then able to go for minutes on end perhaps even hours, because I was so focused and nothing could slow me down.
How this exercise can relate to Dracula is because as said before Autaud used the theatre of cruelty to bring out people's fear's, insecurities, make them really engage with their imagination and make them uncomfortable also, many brilliant techniques all used within Dracula.
As quoted from Wikipedia “The Theatre of Cruelty (French: Théâtre de la Cruauté) is a surrealist form of theatre theorised by Antonin Artaud in his book The Theatre and its Double. "Without an element of cruelty at the root of every spectacle," he writes, "the theatre is not possible. In our present state of degeneration it is through the skin that metaphysics must be made to re-enter our minds." By "cruelty," Artaud referred not to sadism or causing pain, but rather a violent, austere, physical determination to shatter the false reality that, he wrote, "lies like a shroud over our perceptions."
A lot of myths came of vampires for instance
“Vampires sleep in coffins:
Source: This myth likely arose from gravediggers and passersby who observed vampires emerging from coffins and crypts.
Fact: If a vampire did spend the night in a coffin, it probably had nothing to do with sleeping preference. In the old days, many bite victims were interred while still in a vampiric coma. The truth is, vampires will sleep wherever they feel safe”
“Garlic repels vampires
Source: Most likely based on observation. To ward off vampires, garlic would be worn, hung in windows, or rubbed on chimneys and keyholes.
Fact: Vampires have sensitive noses and can be momentarily driven off by pungent odors. However, this method of deterrence is unreliable and certainly won't work on”
“Crosses repel vampires & burn their flesh”
“Source: Christian beliefs that vampires are demons and therefore enemies of God. During the Dark Ages, vampires were known to have been tortured by the church using superheated iron crosses to "burn the Holy Spirit into them" before execution.
Fact: Unless heated as a torture device, or used as some kind of melee or throwing weapon, crosses have absolutely no effect on vampires. They have no trouble entering churches either.”
Both Dracula and Nosferatu are set around the same period of time, they are both incredibly different to that of the theatre of nowadays... for instance, the use of lighting and sound is different and now in the 21st century there has been new technology introduced
The acting style is different as it is just accepting Stanislavsky’s concepts. Therefore you can see the slow adaption in the films, along with this, actors are just getting used to sound and not having to use big facial expressions and gestures to show emotion as they can now speak.
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