characters. I stole that. There’s a
lot of direct address in this. So
it very much has the sense of a
story being told to the audience
on an autumn night around the
campfire when there’s a full
moon. I think that’s something
we respond to very viscerally as
audience members.
ourselves before we go to bed
at night. There’s nothing real
about it. There’s no attempt in
this adaptation to update the
vampires like in Twilight or True
Blood or an Anne Rice story. It’s
just to tap into the mythic core
of the story.
One of the things that is
unique about this adaptation
is that the novel is told in
letters, newspaper articles, and
diary entries of the principal
NJ STAGE - ISSUE 51
This is a play you’ve directed
several times before. Have you
learned things about the work
each time?
This will be the fifth time I’ve
directed it and it’s had about 30-
40 productions. I’ve certainly
learned a great deal every time
I’ve done it. I try to describe it
as very language-driven. It is
classical in terms of its style, if
you will, in that it hangs on the
language and that language
being truly emotionally filled
throughout. It’s almost operatic
in scale. It feels like a big play
and these are big emotions. In
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