Act 2 Scene 6, 7 & 8 - Development

Scene 6

Red circles=Chorus

The chorus the stage will start miming as horses aligning themselves into two lines, on each sides of the highest two steps and start trotting in place, being almost cartoon like horses rather than real ones. This sets the style of this scene, which is almost too happy, since Jonathan in the scene has suppressed all the bad memories of Dracula, and Mina is just happy to be with her husband, unknowing of her sisters death.  Mina and Jonathan will sit on the top step bobbing up and down as if they would be in a carriage. The newly weds have a discussion about lunch and how excited Mina is to meet her sister Lucy. his scene seems not to fit in with the play, but I think it is there to show the extent of Jonathan's trauma but also just to make the audience feel worse once they find out about Lucy's death. During the scene, the people from scene 5 will remain on the floor, frozen in place.

Scene 7

We start with Mina and Jonathan getting off-stage and Lucy with Van Helsing joining the chorus. The chorus then creates a square shaped cell for Renfield after a smaal burst of manic laughter, since this scene is placed at Bedlam. Nisbett, separating from the cell goes down to Seward to have a discussion about Renfield, but after Seward excuses her and goes to talk to Renfield, she will join back into the cell
   The idea of the cell came from me, since I thought that it would a way to use the chorus in a way that doesn't take away from the action and the characters, especially Sewards feelings. I suggested that cell could start moving slightly, having the chorus members take a turn step, always replacing the previous chorus members place, going in rounds. The lines to change at would be "He is at hand.", "...zoophagous to boot.", "I don't want anything to do with souls.", "...vestigial or atrophied soul.", "My sould to wake.", "Life's all right.", "Or what? Drink?", "...burdened with a soul?" and "...'life' in the future?", which after the cells would just continue moving, as well as buzzing after Seward line " Flies!". I thought this would create tension and show the anger and aggressiveness that Seward is feeling inside of him. We tried it out and people thought it could work well if we rehearsed it well enough. We had a couple of extra rehearsals where we went trough this scene, but for some reason we didn't manage to get the movement right or look good, especially as we got to do it in the actual space, so Sophie suggested to change it. Instead of moving in a circle, we would create the cell with our hands. People in the edged will create the corners and the people in the middle will continue doing different hand movements on the same cues. This was a good change, since it was easy to learn, but also it worked better on the actual stage.
   As Seward would take Renfield out of the stage down to the floor to beat him, Nisbett will come back into the scene. This is when the chorus will stop moving their hands and stop the buzzing, and turn towards Seward, as judging his actions. We will stay in this position as Mina and Jonathan enter crying till the end of scene.

Scene 8

This the second big speech from Van Helsing, talking about Lucy's death and his King laughter that he will now laugh for the last time. It was evident that we wanted something happen with the chorus while Van Helsing is delivering her monologue, and so me and couple of other girls got the idea to have us play out the funeral of Lucy's. It would easy for us to carry Lucy down the steps and lay her down int he middle of the floor, gathering around her, since we were already up on the stage, having Van Helsing stay up on the steps giving her speech.


   We felt that we still needed to have a song to sing during the funeral, since it is kind of a tradition to do so. We started out by singing 'Rose Rose', but since it has been so used in previous performances, we needed to find a new one, something that is simple and easy to learn. I really felt that the song should be somewhat eerie, since we are making a more horrific play here and I found this Romanian lullaby. I didn't really think that the song would have had to be English, since in the early discussion we agreed that travel is one of the big themes in the play, and this song could symbolize the connection between England and Romania because of Dracula. Originally the group turned down this song, since they waned it to be an English one, but after Andy asked me to show it again, with Liams song, this was picked since it was much simple and worked well with the mood of the play. Of course, we wouldn't have to learn the entire song, but decided to only learn the last verse to have a dynamic short hymn to sing throughout the play. So, we would sing the song first once getting ready to lift Lucy and then again while carrying her down the steps. During Van Helsings speech, the chorus would continue humming the song, finishing the scene with singing the song once more. Then, we would burst into loud manic laughter and go into our Bedlam positions for the next scene.