DRACULA

Date of Run: October 16-November 2, 2014

ROLE: Renfield

Production Photos by Adrian Hyman

"Michael Hunter goes from being a cracked egg in Alice: The Rebellion in Wonderland to just plain cracked as William Renfield, resident Sanatorium fly-eater and Dracula’s minion. Hunter has fun with the bi/tri/quadri-polar character and when he’s not forcefully expressing deep psychological anguish, he is actually able to provide some necessary comic relief..."
Harry Duke, http://forallevents.info/reviews/dracula-sonoma/

 October 27, 2014 

"Michael Hunter is Renfield, a deliciously creepy fly-eating madman patient of Dr. Seward with his own dark secret."

"The youthful Michael Hunter (who plays Renfield) is equally as intense and a bit disturbing as the fly eating servant to Dracula."
Guest reviewers, forallevents.info/reviews, October 25, 2014

"Renfield, with his own dark secret, is played to creepy perfection by Michael Hunter."
Various reviews from Patch.com, October 29, 2014

My fall show of 2014 as the play Dracula by Hamilton Deane and John Balderston. It was presented by Silver Moon Theatre in association with the Sonoma Theatre Alliance, the same organization that helped produce my previous two shows. The director was Nellie Cravens. How I got my role in this show is quite possibly one of my more interesting audition stories up to this posting. It begins very early in 2014 at the Sonoma Theatre Alliance general auditions, which were held in March. 

I was actually proud of myself with this audition because I felt I did very well in both my song and my monologue, which made all the directors laugh. It must have been good because I was called back or cast in four of the seven shows eligible, though I had to turn down a couple of them for personal reasons. However, I did not mark down that I wanted to be considered for Dracula, because I thought I would not have time since by then I'd be working and taking culinary classes (which wasn't that case later). Nevertheless, Nellie contacted me and asked to come in and I decided to see how it would go. Callbacks were held in May in Sonoma. For some reason, which I cannot remember, I thought this was the musical adaptation of the story, but it wasn't. The only role I was called for was for Jonathan Harker. However, I did not get the role. It was a matter of chemistry between the actors onstage and I was not the right fit, but Nellie was pleased with my work.

Two months later, while I was in rehearsals for Alice: The Rebellion of Wonderland, word got to me that they were short a person for the role of Renfield, a crazy, asylum patient who eats flies and other living things and is controlled by Dracula. Nick Christenson, the director for Alice, encouraged me to go for it. At first, I shrugged it off thinking "Come off it, Nellie's already rejected me once, she's never gonna take me." However, Nick kept pushing me to go for it, and Matt Witthaus (who was also in Alice and had been cast as Van Helsing in Dracula) also nudged me in that direction. I decided "Why not?" and messaged Nellie saying that if was willing to have another look at me, I was interested. We agreed to meet at her home in Sonoma one afternoon.

The callback went very well. First, we did a table reading and then we got up and did some moving. Nellie was very pleased with what I did and how I could do what she asked of me. About two hours after I arrived home, I got the call from Nellie offering me the part. I was thrilled. I found out later that five other men were being looked at as well. I felt vindicated by this because around this time I'll admit that I began to question why I was doing theatre because I was frustrated by how I didn't get better roles and never had my moment in the spotlight, and I felt like it was just another place for people to tell me I wasn't good enough. The low point for me was after an audition of Romeo and Juliet. The role of Mercutio is a bucket list role for me and one I won't be able to play forever. I wasn't cast in that role, nor was I even cast in the show at all. My heart was broken over this. I even started thinking that I didn't want to act anymore. But after this I thought "Maybe just a little longer."

The rest of the cast, in addition to Matt Witthaus, consisted of Len Handeland, Dan Monez, Michael Miller, Susan Lee, Courtney Bristow, and George Bereschik.

Cast and Crew

I was able to attend the first read through of the production. At the intermission break, Matt and I walked across the parking lot to the Sonoma Community Center to check in at Alice because that happened to be the first night when that show moved into the theatre. Nick wanted us to come over and just have a look at the set when we had a minute. After that night Matt and I had to go through tech rehearsals and begin performances for Alice, so we were not able to fully commit to Dracula for some time.

I started preparing for my role by reading the original novel, which had many differences from the play. The play had been written in 1924 and then updated in 1927. Some things were changed in the transition, though for some of them I have no idea why, nor do I see the reason for it. In particular I wasn't happy that my character lived in the end of the play when he dies in the novel and in the original play adaptation. I've always wanted to have an onstage death. Instead, in that scene, I was tortured by Dracula and then I would crawl down the stairs and act like the pain from the torture caused me to pass out. Good enough, maybe, but still, a death scene...

(Top: Being tortured by Dracula, bottom: The moment after)

 

 

I finally returned to rehearsals after the second weekend of performances for Alice. I found that in this show I would be on the ground a lot whether it would be on my knees or fully on the ground. Quite a few were worried about my physical well-being, but it was nothing really. I had to do this show in an English accent, which came a bit easier this time, but even so I felt that it was hindering my performance because I spent a lot of time trying not to lose it and, in the beginning, I did not feel like I was going fully into it as I could have. In time I overcame that obstacle, however, but I still wonder how I would've done with my natural voice.

In this show I also got to do some good fight choreography. I had to attack Matt in the first act, then Courtney (who played Lucy) in the second act. Then in the third act I was attacked by Dracula. We were supposed to stage all that during the last week of August, but then two days before that was to happen the area was struck by a 6.0 earthquake that affected the Napa and Sonoma area. The fight choreographer was affected by it, and I thought we would reschedule, but he never came. We eventually blocked something, but in all honesty, it was not as good as I had been hoping for.

One of my attack scenes

First, we worked on the basic staging. This show would be unlike the previous two I had done in that space. This one would have a staircase and use the floor of the building as a playing space. While Alice also had a staircase we would go down into the audience through the aisle and back up very quickly. Three of my four entrances were the same with me being pulled in from behind the curtains. As time went on, we polished and reworked some of the staging, especially mine. My staging seemed to get reworked every other rehearsal. Some actors would not like that and get confused (admittedly it took a little time for me to remember everything), but it didn't matter because I felt that Nellie was always giving me something better.

We moved into the theater about three weeks before opening. We had the staircase that would lead from the stage to the floor right away. It was in this building that I was a hero. One night when Nellie was walking down the stairs, she lost her balance, stumbled and would have fallen had I not caught her. I was sorely tempted to jump the stairs at one scene where I run down them, just to amaze the audience, but I decided against it because I did not want to risk hurting myself in case it didn't work. That's something I miss about being a child: jumping from a high spot with no fear whatsoever, know what I mean?

I had only two costumes for this show, one for the first half of the show, one for the second. For this show I designed my own hair and make-up. I gave myself dark circles under my eyes and shadow under my cheekbones to give myself a gaunter appearance and I applied gel to my hair and made it look unkempt.

To date of this posting, this was also the show that had my favorite curtain call. I had always wanted a bow that was all to myself. I had gotten that in Little Shop of Horrors, but I was in the ensemble and the first one out and nobody claps hard or cheers for the ensemble. This time I not only got my own bow, but I was the third to last to come out. I had honestly expected to be earlier than that.

The first night of full tech went very late. I didn't get home until nearly midnight. There were a lot of issues that needed to be addressed. The second night went better, though still not perfect. On that night we had two photographers around for publicity photos and production photos. It required us to work with them walking around close by us on the set taking the photos. Call me a narcissist, but I loved it. The night before we opened, we had a free invited preview. I sent invites to people I felt were not very likely to attend whether by the cost or the drive. Five people I knew were there, which was wonderful. There was just one problem really. In one scene there is supposed to be a bat that flies over the stage and this night it was stubborn and wouldn't move as fast.

Opening night was spectacular. We had a couple of technical issues here and there, but that's kind of the norm for opening, I guess. Other than that, the audience loved it, and in one aspect, regardless of the problem. The problem was the bat, but for a different reason. When the bat flew, I heard people laugh over the intercom, which is what many of us feared. The bat was not realistic looking, and it looked too comical. When the laughing started, I thought "Not good, not good, not good, not good." Then I distinctly heard someone say, "That is so cool," and when the bat stopped, the audience applauded and my mind switched to "No, I take it back! Good, good, good, good!" They were amazed at some of the tricks like when Dracula changes into a bat and disappears. They were all audibly amazed at that.

In Dracula's final scene, he "disappears." The script says he changes into a bat. We had a way to make Len disappear offstage in a way that amazed the audiences. How it worked went like this. He would wear a floor-length, hooded cape that was held together by Velcro. The hood was supported by a skeleton so that when he left the cape the hood would stay standing. Then as Dan and Michael held the cape, Len would quickly slip out the side door and at the right moment Dan and Michael would drop the cape and a puff of smoke would pop on the stage. Some audiences were amazed by the trick, but others (mostly theatre people) were not always so easily fooled.

The second night was a smaller audience, and it was not a perfect performance. Some things were better, but the final set change unfortunately took too long. It is changed while recorded dialogue is played and one crew member was still onstage when it ended, and it came time for the actors to enter and the scene to continue. It was a good night for me, however. When I took my bow, I saw people stand and cheer for me. It felt so wonderful to finally bask in the spotlight. Little did I know that they were a group of people from work who came to see the show. Then better than that, after the show, Michael Miller's mother, who was a psych nurse, came up to me and told me that I was "spot on." (Yes!) The third night had an audience that was probably bigger than the first and again the final set change took too long. Other than that, nothing major happened. The first matinee had a large, nearly sold-out audience and nothing bad happened, though when the bat flew over it was a mixture of both laughter and awe. Both times, I was met with cheering when I took my bow.

I've captured a fly

For the second weekend, the first show started with an audience that only filled one-third of the theatre. But then the rest of the run had audiences that were much larger. The Friday and Sunday shows nearly sold out. I believe the Sunday show was only seven seats away from completely selling out. 

The only thing that was a downer about this weekend was a couple of problems. Friday was the worst. First the bat got stuck midway on the line and made several people laugh. Then later on in a scene between Dracula and Van Helsing, Dracula is supposed to break a mirror with a vase, but that night when he threw the vase it missed and went under the mirror. Then at the end of the scene, when Dracula leaves there's supposed to be a gunshot, but it never happened. Then on Saturday, a performance where there was a critic no less, the bat got stuck again.

For the final weekend, the audience was nearly sold out each night. We even started selling a few seats in the balcony, though just the front row. We were told that Saturday night sold out, but I don't think some people showed up, but never mind. Friday was Halloween and we had a costume contest. A couple who dressed as Dr. Frankenstein and the Bride of Frankenstein won. For the last performance we had the show taped. And, of course, something bad had to happen. In this case it was someone in the audience near the camera had a coughing fit and it didn't sound like they tried to cover their mouth. Annoying. We had the cast party at Len's house. It was a large and incredible home in the hills east of Sonoma. Very stylish if I say so.

For this show I took some of the set with me. In the show we had five bookcases filled with books that were donated. When the donor was called, he said we could take what we wanted because he was going to donate them anyway and, after looking through every book on the shelves, I took five with me.

I was glad that I got to do this show because it gave me the role of a lifetime. It gave me a chance to really act and become a different character, similar to Cuckoo's Nest, but this time I got to move around, and I had lines. With this show I got cheers when I bowed. With this show I finally got something I always wanted- a moment in the spotlight. A brief one, but it was for me.