tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43951376771547345922024-02-18T21:53:18.943-05:00RACONTEUR VENTURES presents NOSFERATU ON STAGE! World Premiere!Based on the 1923 film by F. W. Murnau. New Jersey.Raconteur Ventureshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06704248099274234320noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4395137677154734592.post-64432164212320948862012-02-29T19:55:00.023-05:002012-10-13T14:53:49.638-04:00<div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBCcmZBOvNFncH3oG8VTkWhxuQFZD8WnP7R4NXgVNmFIMnwDIaRYF22L0IB4o0O3kiYgIz0KF2W4HKD6_6714yAr4UFuFaupvzTxVSRQcm8WUCPGeBOPg4UVmx9a4kG6n1z7UQ9_YAEfWr/s1600/NOSFERATU+PRESS+2.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5532428772809443490" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBCcmZBOvNFncH3oG8VTkWhxuQFZD8WnP7R4NXgVNmFIMnwDIaRYF22L0IB4o0O3kiYgIz0KF2W4HKD6_6714yAr4UFuFaupvzTxVSRQcm8WUCPGeBOPg4UVmx9a4kG6n1z7UQ9_YAEfWr/s400/NOSFERATU+PRESS+2.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 292px; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; width: 400px;" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">BEFORE <span style="font-style: italic;">TWILIGHT </span>AND <span style="font-style: italic;">TRUE BLOOD</span>, BEFORE <span style="font-style: italic;">DRACULA</span> EVEN, THERE WAS...</span><br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />NOSFERATU: THE VAMPYRE<br />Adapted & Directed by Alex Dawson</span><br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">High res photo: Nina Westervelt</span><span style="font-style: italic;">.</span><br />
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Based on the 1923 German Expressionist film by F. W. Murnau, Dawson's stage adaptation additionally draws on Chinese shadow-play, Shakespeare, and explorer/orientalist Richard Burton's translation of Hindu vampire fables to tell the story of Count Orlock, a rat-fanged Romanian looking for love even as he brings a boatload of Black Death to a German village.<br />
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From the team that brought you <span style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://aclockworkorangetheplay.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">A CLOCKWORK ORANGE</a></span>, with makeup by <a href="http://www.savini.com/" target="_blank">Tom Savini</a> alumnus Dan Diana and original music by composer Bruce Donnola, the production, which features the creative reunion of <i>Fright Night</i> co-stars: <i>Justified</i> regular William Ragsdale (Charley Brewster) and Tony nominee Stephen Geoffreys (Evil Ed), opens with a scene so unsettling even the swooniest <span style="font-style: italic;">Twilight</span> fan would be hard pressed to find the conceit remotely romantic ever again.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgixWU_8OUr2uGUMIP8cuPcsk0nQpRnSzEM0102Lz6c8HhnW6J08-TBidZQxYffin-GaUTPsFms4eSMjidEJrTOz4HzAShD9Y0BnAsJsRfnpx5sp4-sBfHpFzanKuab4zWkKr-GlCTK0i7Q/s1600/Fright+Night+Stephen.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgixWU_8OUr2uGUMIP8cuPcsk0nQpRnSzEM0102Lz6c8HhnW6J08-TBidZQxYffin-GaUTPsFms4eSMjidEJrTOz4HzAShD9Y0BnAsJsRfnpx5sp4-sBfHpFzanKuab4zWkKr-GlCTK0i7Q/s200/Fright+Night+Stephen.png" width="170" /></a></div>
In 1984, <b>Stephen Geoffreys</b> was nominated for Broadway's Tony Award for his performance in Joseph Papp's <i>The Human Comedy</i>. He appeared in several horror and teen films in the eighties, most notably <i>Heaven Help Us</i> and <i>976-EVIL</i>. In 1986, he co-starred with Christopher Walken and Sean Penn in the critically acclaimed drama <i>At Close Range</i>. Geoffreys is best known for playing the Renfield- esque <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_K2ukRBFMHo">"Evil Ed" in the 1985 vampire horror classic <i>Fright Night</i></a>, directed by Tom Holland and starring Roddy McDowall, William Ragsdale, and Chris Sarandon.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsZHk734_bprYNVl5CqnJx6Texo7dX9DNcZKweDCSgoas8d_F0V3OXJ-fsJWUKxE83a3uqw5k_NFjDIazBZdE6P27TN-pqyqaxna25NIsn8o9NxtAx994opycv9ohMpC7XzMrORLyuv1_f/s1600/William+Ragsdale.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="138" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsZHk734_bprYNVl5CqnJx6Texo7dX9DNcZKweDCSgoas8d_F0V3OXJ-fsJWUKxE83a3uqw5k_NFjDIazBZdE6P27TN-pqyqaxna25NIsn8o9NxtAx994opycv9ohMpC7XzMrORLyuv1_f/s200/William+Ragsdale.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<b>William Ragsdale</b> is best known for playing the teen vampire slayer, Charley Brewster, in the 1985 horror vampire classic, <i><a href="http://www.blogger.com/wiki/Fright_Night" title="Fright Night">Fright Night</a></i> (and<i> Fright Night II</i>), and Herman Brooks in the sitcom <i><a href="http://www.blogger.com/wiki/Herman%27s_Head" title="Herman's Head">Herman's Head</a></i> (1991-94). On Broadway, he played Eugene Jerome in Neil Simon's <i>Biloxi Blues</i>. Most recently, Ragsdale appeared as Gary Hawkins on the first three seasons of Justified (2010 - 2012). <br />
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<b>NOTE TO PARENTS: </b>If your kid is old enough to watch the b/w films from Universal's horror heyday (<span style="font-style: italic;">Frankenstein</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">Dracula</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Wolf Man</span>), they're old enough to see this. It's very, very creepy, but not graphic in the least.<br />
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<object height="300" width="400"> <param name="flashvars" value="offsite=true&lang=en-us&page_show_url=%2Fphotos%2F62249752%40N07%2Fsets%2F72157626599092916%2Fshow%2F&page_show_back_url=%2Fphotos%2F62249752%40N07%2Fsets%2F72157626599092916%2F&set_id=72157626599092916&jump_to="> <param name="movie" value="http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=71649"> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><embed height="300" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="400" src="http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=71649" allowfullscreen="true" flashvars="offsite=true&lang=en-us&page_show_url=%2Fphotos%2F62249752%40N07%2Fsets%2F72157626599092916%2Fshow%2F&page_show_back_url=%2Fphotos%2F62249752%40N07%2Fsets%2F72157626599092916%2F&set_id=72157626599092916&jump_to="></embed></object><br />
<object height="300" width="400"> <param name="flashvars" value="offsite=true&lang=en-us&page_show_url=%2Fphotos%2F62249752%40N07%2Fsets%2F72157627130908845%2Fshow%2F&page_show_back_url=%2Fphotos%2F62249752%40N07%2Fsets%2F72157627130908845%2F&set_id=72157627130908845&jump_to="> <param name="movie" value="http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=104087"> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><embed height="300" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="400" src="http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=104087" allowfullscreen="true" flashvars="offsite=true&lang=en-us&page_show_url=%2Fphotos%2F62249752%40N07%2Fsets%2F72157627130908845%2Fshow%2F&page_show_back_url=%2Fphotos%2F62249752%40N07%2Fsets%2F72157627130908845%2F&set_id=72157627130908845&jump_to="></embed></object><span style="font-style: italic;"><br />All slide show photos by Rich Kowalski (from Dawson's 2010 workshop production at Middlesex County College).</span></div>
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<b>Questions? Write Team Nos at raconteurbooks@gmail.com.</b>Raconteur Ventureshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06704248099274234320noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4395137677154734592.post-36385267655440424982010-10-14T11:41:00.000-04:002011-07-18T14:14:37.212-04:00CAST/CREW/TRAILER<span style="font-weight: bold;">CAST:</span><br />Count Orlock: <span style="font-weight: bold;">Carlyle Owens</span><br />Knock: <span style="font-weight: bold;">Stephen Geoffreys<br /></span>Thomas Hutter: <span style="font-weight: bold;">Phelan Tupik</span><br />Ellen Hutter:<br />Dr. Wolfgang Heinz: <span style="font-weight: bold;">Laurence Mintz</span><br />Innkeeper/Ensemble: <span style="font-weight: bold;">Jane Hardy </span><br />Captain of the Demeter/Ensemble: <span style="font-weight: bold;">Jeff Maschi</span><br />Mayor: <span style="font-weight: bold;">Michael Jarmus</span><br />Maid/Ensemble:<br />Ensemble:<br />Ensemble:<br />Ensemble:<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />CREW:</span><br />Adapted/Designed/Directed by <span style="font-weight: bold;">Alex Dawson</span><br />Makeup: <span style="font-weight: bold;">Dan Diana</span><br />Lighting Design: <span style="font-weight: bold;">Michael Hochman</span><br />Music: <span style="font-weight: bold;">Bruce Donnola</span><br />Producer: <span style="font-weight: bold;">The Raconteur & The Forum Theatre Company</span><br />Technical Director: <span style="font-weight: bold;">Roman Klima</span><br />Stage Manager: <span style="font-weight: bold;">Harol Margarin</span><br />Production Manager: <span style="font-weight: bold;">Kristy Lauricella</span><br /><br />Promoter: <span style="font-weight: bold;">Ray Cheeks</span><br />Press Photo: <span style="font-weight: bold;">Nina Westvelt</span><br />Production Photos: <span style="font-weight: bold;">Rich Kowalski</span><br /><br /><br /><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/DPylOkYCQe8?fs=1&hl=en_US"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/DPylOkYCQe8?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>Raconteur Ventureshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06704248099274234320noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4395137677154734592.post-67294430419577517022010-09-03T17:20:00.001-04:002011-07-23T13:34:59.664-04:00DIRECTOR'S NOTE<span style="font-weight:bold;">VAMPIRE VISION: Adapting Nosferatu</span><br />By Alex Dawson<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK6VLIMKTUb4Uly59UJKVDX03R_fiDNrmYuLz4fkMtctpjvb2etvmIrEWAMkxa7j3r1ePWpFpmIT_Ao5nq-p6Yz81aWTuXWXyLv9BvMofwl7iIpyo24MvHK3IeObJ_uVOaOoRoFTAg9c2b/s1600/wolfman.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 134px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK6VLIMKTUb4Uly59UJKVDX03R_fiDNrmYuLz4fkMtctpjvb2etvmIrEWAMkxa7j3r1ePWpFpmIT_Ao5nq-p6Yz81aWTuXWXyLv9BvMofwl7iIpyo24MvHK3IeObJ_uVOaOoRoFTAg9c2b/s200/wolfman.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5632602569456353906" /></a>I’ve always been a werewolf man. For three Halloweens running, from second to fifth grade, I loped and howled, I blackened my nose and did my best, with fake fur and crepe wool, to imitate the yak fro of Lon Chaney’s Wolf Man. My stepfather was a trapper (I grew up on a farm in Alabama), and one year I even hung gray pelts, rabbit and squirrel, from the shoulders and chest of my costume (I kid you not.). But no one cares about werewolves. Vampires, on the other hand, are everywhere. Long the staple of fringe culture (genre fiction, comic books, B movies, Goth clubs), they have since permeated the mainstream. Indeed, Sookie Stackhouse scribe Charlaine Harris is the first author to have eight novels concurrently in the top ten, and, just this week, scientists discovered a new fanged fish which they named, you guessed it, Dracula.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh15iCFKcSZWnT-EMTc91Yyu5u8mPXgUjzQaRhVA8JykGTD6HAa-KNhUxAi8g0xTvD0jwKLNVjfhhCAq8Eml7CZO7-WpqcO_d6AHxjOpczZTqEVqgamfIzYOYPO0SyPQzoaUYG7E3TBt8FI/s1600/article-1217094-014790D600001005-939_468x303.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 259px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh15iCFKcSZWnT-EMTc91Yyu5u8mPXgUjzQaRhVA8JykGTD6HAa-KNhUxAi8g0xTvD0jwKLNVjfhhCAq8Eml7CZO7-WpqcO_d6AHxjOpczZTqEVqgamfIzYOYPO0SyPQzoaUYG7E3TBt8FI/s400/article-1217094-014790D600001005-939_468x303.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5632583640437474402" /></a><span style="font-style:italic;">Max Schreck as Count Orlock in F.W. Murnau's 1923 Nosferatu</span><br /><br />But before <span style="font-style:italic;">Twilight</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">True Blood</span>, before <span style="font-style:italic;">Dracula</span> even, there was <span style="font-style:italic;">Nosferatu</span>. <span style="font-style:italic;">Nosferatu</span> is a 1923 German Expressionist film by F.W. Murnau (one of the most influential directors of the silent era). Released ten years before the iconic Bela Lugosi movie, <span style="font-style:italic;">Nosferatu</span>, a.k.a. Count Orlock, is sometimes labeled “The First Vampire.” Dracula is handsome and aristocratic, a satin lined cape and hair as black and shiny as the back of a beetle; Orlock, quite simply, is not. But this physical distinction, while the most obvious, is decidedly superficial. On the other hand, the addition of the bubonic rats, which Orlock shepherds and, with his medial incisors, resembles, is profound. The vermin tie <span style="font-style:italic;">Nosferatu </span>to the Black Death, couching the story in world history and suggesting an epic context that Dracula, I don’t think, has. But it’s a silent film, the plague references are brief and few, just a handful of exclamatory title cards (“The plague!”); the context needed cultivating.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuFcPPr-6-ldvilijulxPjZEYO6MUn4NzXASrABCmAQ2-hyCtWZtgcQaH6N2186Xa-QR2xd6vFA5aA1UZw1Wr9pIK6IoxY9qpiFWtt4PXhu0lLSxJmOmiv2eC2cY96HTwUsYy7BeVpNlDZ/s1600/user80242_pic4417_1257338160.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 166px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuFcPPr-6-ldvilijulxPjZEYO6MUn4NzXASrABCmAQ2-hyCtWZtgcQaH6N2186Xa-QR2xd6vFA5aA1UZw1Wr9pIK6IoxY9qpiFWtt4PXhu0lLSxJmOmiv2eC2cY96HTwUsYy7BeVpNlDZ/s200/user80242_pic4417_1257338160.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5632585071362592802" /></a>I first learned about the plague in sixth grade. I remember a particular picture in my History textbook: a woodcut of a man in a ground skimming coat and a mask with a long curved beak. At the top of the picture, in worn, chiseled font, were the words “Plague Doctor” (the beak, I would learn, held aromatic herbs meant to filter the “bad air”). I was horrified by the bulbous black lesions, which were, almost always, odiously described as “egg shaped,” and obsessed with the rats. (Rats have always scared me more than, say, bats. Bats feel remote, flitting and wheeling overhead as if whirled on invisible strings; rats are land bound, among us, they’re in our walls, under our beds. My brother used to shoot them—fat, black, corn fed things—in our grain shed, and one winter, attracted by the heat of my electric blanket, one scampered, no, lumbered, also fat, this time on graham crackers, across my chest.) Later, in art school, I was haunted by a lecture hall slide of Breugel’s pandemic panorama, <span style="font-style:italic;">The Triumph of Death</span>, with its skeleton armies, its black sea littered with burning ships, its dog nibbling the face of a child, its rats. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg2c_Ml-UeYQtOFoSz_tczRUK389r-zrzEHO-gtYE0_79g4iQYQix4PO0HfQ2l2QsGkkhCWBq2LpGg5D2vKg3SVQV8nFZs-QfA9t3uLJ3hbgfXFZxo86PYheC1b2eRodfD3n5dSW208VXH/s1600/deathtriumph.jpeg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 288px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg2c_Ml-UeYQtOFoSz_tczRUK389r-zrzEHO-gtYE0_79g4iQYQix4PO0HfQ2l2QsGkkhCWBq2LpGg5D2vKg3SVQV8nFZs-QfA9t3uLJ3hbgfXFZxo86PYheC1b2eRodfD3n5dSW208VXH/s400/deathtriumph.jpeg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5632585261976812018" /></a><span style="font-style:italic;">Triumph of Death, painted c. 1562 by Pieter Bruegel the Elder.</span><br /><br />Preparing to adapt the film, I dug back into the “culture” of the plague (a quick Google search brought up both the woodcut and the panorama). I learned about Justus Hecker (who studied the plague’s relationship to human history), acral necrosis (when extremities darken with gangrene), and what, exactly, a bobak is (sort of a Russian prairie dog). I read the work of contemporaneous writers, Boccacio, Petrarch, and Thomas Nashe, whose poem, <span style="font-style:italic;">A Litany in Time of Plague</span>, with its terrifying refrain “we are sick, we will die,” ultimately provided the production with its mantra. As the play took shape, it began to echo the epistolary structure of Bram Stoker’s <span style="font-style:italic;">Dracula</span> novel (which I’d reread), drawing on letters, diary entries, and medical journal excerpts to suggest, not just the existence of vampires (as they do in the book), but also Orlock’s particular involvement, or, at the very least, presence, at every major outbreak in the disease’s Godforsaken history.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoEP826Rd7lICKl8zo4bnl8HKc8s1-LOLHOrOucDqbzP_c6kVQ74DK9VM6WdlpWBGPH04a6vxALEscfK3XE3M_zMDeOtNePpN3wqoCzZ7nEnEQDRitYp0KKbJ1hZ0trgToMHdFYVKIxqGg/s1600/richard111.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 100px; height: 160px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoEP826Rd7lICKl8zo4bnl8HKc8s1-LOLHOrOucDqbzP_c6kVQ74DK9VM6WdlpWBGPH04a6vxALEscfK3XE3M_zMDeOtNePpN3wqoCzZ7nEnEQDRitYp0KKbJ1hZ0trgToMHdFYVKIxqGg/s200/richard111.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5632586642552686274" /></a>But despite his recurring connection to the “Great Pestilence,” I somehow thought Orlock, fiendishly inhuman in the movie, should, instead, be an anti-hero; a perturber and disturber, and, yes, a bloodsucker, but not dead level evil. I saw him as a creature whose existence was marked by a very human sense of loss and loneliness, concerned not only with the heart as blood pumping aorta, but also the heart as poetic source of love. As a character reference, I thought of Tennyson’s titular Tithonus, who asks for immortality but forgets to ask for eternal youth (and grows ever older, yearning, all the while, for death); and of Shakespeare’s Richard the III, an ugly hunchback, “rudely stamped” by God, who responds to the anguish of his condition with an outcast's credo: "I am determined to prove a villain / And hate the idle pleasures of these days." <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-fl1sCo9Bqe40TL5nRvf-mnrKlbvppILofzAYug9dTLgAlg6P5enUpbvcCbo1CJW0zGJDv9ScjBXXhLc3q54bHEuUiHEleavDyY3Gmdk5wwSUEwK16F-nHj1pLo-k9Cd_b9vxRMsb2rz8/s1600/orlock+dan+diana.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-fl1sCo9Bqe40TL5nRvf-mnrKlbvppILofzAYug9dTLgAlg6P5enUpbvcCbo1CJW0zGJDv9ScjBXXhLc3q54bHEuUiHEleavDyY3Gmdk5wwSUEwK16F-nHj1pLo-k9Cd_b9vxRMsb2rz8/s400/orlock+dan+diana.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5632594986854833202" /></a><span style="font-style:italic;">Make-up artist Dan Diana with Carlyle Owens in partial Orlock guise.</span><br /><br />But RobPat Orlock ain’t, and while my vampire wasn’t a straight out monster, he still had to look the part. Enter foam baker/Tom Savini protégé Dan Diana. (Tom Savini is a makeup artist famous for the Romero <span style="font-style:italic;">Dead</span> flicks and Tarantino’s vampire movie, <span style="font-style:italic;">Dusk ‘til Dawn</span>. Savini has a school in western Pennsy, what <span style="font-style:italic;">Dead</span> heads call zombie country, and Dan is a graduate.) Dan fitted Shakespearean actor Carlyle Owens (who generously agreed to shave his head, sparing us the seam and crinkle of a latex bald cap) with the indelible ears, claws, teeth, and a set of those milky contacts that white out the eye, leaving just a pin prick pupil in the center. The Dan/Carlyle Nosferatu is startling. Shocking, even. Which is a good thing. Indeed, even as I poeticize Orlock’s dilemma and expand his historic context, even as I weave in lines of Shakespeare and Tennyson and Thomas Nashe, my ultimate goal is no grander than a haunted house or a hayride. Simply put: I want to scare the hell out of you.Raconteur Ventureshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06704248099274234320noreply@blogger.com