The New Hampton School Department of Performing Arts is readying the stage for its winter production in McEvoy Theater. The talented cast and crew will present online performances of Dracula! The Radio Play on Friday and Saturday, March 5 and 6 at 8:30 pm.
Staging a radio play
Dracula! The Radio Play, written by Philip Grecian, is a play based on the stage play and novel by Bram Stoker. A radio play is written to be performed in front of a live audience while relying on voice, music, and sound effects to tell its story. The school’s production will have a set that resembles a radio studio from the 1940s. The cast of ten will bring the play to life without an in-person audience, lending the atmospheric feel of a traditional radio play while also allowing for health protocols including social distancing during the pandemic. The story of Dracula contains many familiar characters as the play unveils its tale, ensuring a captivating tale for the audience.
“I have long followed the trail of the vampire,” Professor Van Helsing tells us, “It lives on…for centuries…draining the blood…the life…from its victims, causing them also to become vampires. And this is our story. The story of a small band or mortals who faced the most powerful vampire of them all.” It is 1888 and, in Whitby, England, Lucy Westenra has fallen ill. Her fiancée, Jack Seward has brought her to his sanitarium and called in a battery of physicians, but her condition worsens. Desperate, Jack sends for Van Helsing, a specialist in obscure diseases. Van Helsing’s visit coincides with that of Jonathan Harker and his wife, Mina, who had been Seward’s nurse, but resigned to care for Jon during his recent illness. Better now, Jon remarks that his law firm has purchased, for a Transylvanian client, the old Abbey next door to Seward’s sanitarium. The client’s name is Count Dracula. [Dramatic Publishing]
About the production
Dracula!: The Radio Play is produced by special arrangement with The Dramatic Publishing Campany of Woodstock, Illinois.
