Hilberry Theatre Presents DRACULA, Today

Theatre and Dance at Wayne will unleash Dracula at the Hilberry Theatre just in time for Halloween, running from October 21-November 6. This compelling and adventurous theatrical adaptation of Bram Stoker's work breathes new life into a classic tale of the undead with close ties to the original story. Terror stalks the streets of Victorian London after a Transylvanian vampire comes to the country in search of fresh prey. A young lawyer and his resourceful fiancé lead their group of friends in a race against time to find and destroy Dracula before he can carry out his murderous intentions.

Vampires have been a significant component for American pop culture over the past century. They have given us the conduit to express ourselves in ways we could only imagine. Dracula embodies everything that is dark and timeless. He is even described as an ageless creature. These qualities alone make Dracula in every sense of the word, attractive. The relevance of the play is consumed by loss of morality and the expression of humanity's dark tendencies. The play was a product of the Victorian Era, where so-called immoral desires were deemed unacceptable to express, leading to them being dramatically repressed. Dracula, as he goes throughout the story is constantly looking to "turn" his victims. By "turning his victims", he is quite honestly stripping them of innocence, conservatism, and any inhibitions they had before, making their expressions from speech to sexuality quite explicit.

The author, Bram Stoker, worked for the Lyceum Theatre in London, England, while writing the novel, Dracula, and expected that his work would be quickly adapted for the stage. With this in mind, he modeled the vampire's aristocratic bearing and sweeping gestures on the actors he knew. While Stoker's expected stage version never materialized, his gothic novel has always been popular with actors and filmmakers. Charles Morey's newly revised stage adaptation is as entrancing and mysterious as its source material, taking full advantage of the theatrical potential Stoker's novel contains.

The Hilberry is honored to welcome adaptation playwright Charles Morey as this production's director. Mr. Morey is a director and playwright with more than forty-five years worth of experience in professional theatre and extensive credits from coast to coast. Morey notes, "My intent in writing this adaptation was to translate Stoker's extraordinary novel to the stage in a manner that was as faithful as possible to the plot structure, characters, thematic concerns, tone and sensibility of the original. It tries to balance the explicit allegorical framework of the struggle between Good and Evil with the unalloyed melodrama of the Gothic thriller. I first read Dracula when I was thirteen or fourteen. It scared the pants off me. It still disturbs my dreams from time to time today when I work on productions of the play and dip back into Stoker's tale."

Tickets for Dracula range from $25-$30, while student rush tickets are $10 with valid student ID the night of the performance. You can secure your seats by calling the Hilberry Theatre Box Office at (313) 577-2972, online at Hilberry.com, or by visiting the box office at 4743 Cass Avenue at the corner of Hancock Street.

About the Hilberry Theatre Company
Wayne State University's Maggie Allesee Department of Theatre and Dance serves students as a nexus of performance, production, and research in the fields of dance, theatre, and performance studies. It provides a wide variety of degree programs that allow students the flexibility to study these disciplines broadly or to concentrate more specifically in performance, design, or management. The Hilberry Theatre hosts a professional theatre company that is staffed by graduate students. The company performs and produces an annual season of six plays, including high school matinees for nearly 6,000 students.