Here’s a little story from back in the theatre days that you might find interesting. The adventures took place while I was doing Dracula for the first time. Yes, the first time. I have done Dracula twice.
The production was at a small college in Central Illinois that will remain nameless for the moment. I was the director, scenery designer, and lighting designer for the show. I also did the painting, but had a team of highly talented artists to assist.
Dracula is a really fun show, but it has certain technical challenges that must be overcome. Because each theatre is different, the methodologies behind a solution vary with the venue. For instance, at one point a bat must fly in through a French window and then fly out again. Tricky effect, very, very tricky. Our solution was to have the bat fly in on a nylon line, turn in mid-air, and fly back out. The bat was weighted in the nose, and the “flying” was really a pendulum effect that had been perfected by a stage technician who had practiced for hours. Other theatres might have the bat rigged on a drop line and track. Every stage is unique.
One of my favorite effects for the show involved Count Dracula turning into a bat and flying up a chimney. This is not small potatoes, and it can be either a wonderful effect or a total disaster. In the next to the last scene of the play, several special effects come together in a sequence that is essential to the plot of the show.
As the play draws to a close, Dracula has been unmasked as an evil entity. Jonathan Harker, Dr. Seward, and Abraham Van Helsing have cornered the vampire in front of a large fireplace. He is trapped. But, Drac has one last trick up his sleeve, so to speak. Dracula shouts some threatening words, waves his arms, and “tosses” something on the floor in front of the heroic trio.
There is a pair of tremendous puffs of smoke, a boom, and Dracula is obscured. Harker, Seward, and Van Helsing are coughing in the smoke, waving their arms, and staggering around. When the smoke clears, Dracula is gone! He has turned to a bat and has escaped up the fireplace’s chimney.
The slightly nutty Renfield, who is Dracula’s assistant, of sorts, runs around a bit and shouts something like, “Master, I am following you!” He then slaps a secret latch, a hatch in the wall paneling opens, and Renfield dashes out of the room and goes down a hidden passage.
The trio, meanwhile, arm themselves with the usual anti-vampire hardware (crosses, stakes, and the like) and rush out the French window. They follow the path to Dracula’s castle where the last scene takes place.
We then have a blackout with scene change, and when the lights come back up we are in the depths of the castle. A barely-lit coffin is propped up, and inside we discover the vampire. Harker, Dr. Seward, and Van Helsing creep into the room and find Dracula. They apply the anti-vampire hardware in creative fashion, and the next thing we know Lucy Seward is released from her spell and Dracula is permanently dead.
Now we cue the blackout, then cue the curtain in. The next cues are curtain out, lights up, curtain call sequence. Final cue series, curtain in, lights out. End. Everyone goes home.
On the last night of the show, we had a little problem. It seems that somebody crashed a car into a power pole and that caused the lights to go out on half of the college’s campus. That included our theatre building. 90 minutes before curtain, we were dark. The crew rounded up flashlights and such, and, as best as they could, they prepared the stage.
About forty-five minutes before curtain-time, I rode my motorcycle (1963 Honda Dream) over to the site of the crash and spoke to the technicians there. Bad news, the damage was very serious, and it was unlikely that the lights would be back on before showtime.
We cancelled the evening’s performance. We couldn’t even let the audience into our lobby. It was too dark and, therefore, dangerous. But, we gave everyone the option of either getting their money back or coming to a performance the next day, a Sunday, at noon for a re-scheduled performance.
Sunday morning promised to be a much better day, but by 10:30 am the power was still out. I chatted with the technicians again, and it turns out that the car crash caused a major component on the pole to blow, apparently a fusible link, and that link was of an old style. Replacements were only available from Chicago. No power until Monday afternoon, at best.
Back in the theatre I broke the bad news to the cast and crew. Sadly, the cast had almost completed their makeup and were ready for the final costume dressings. I told them to take it off, and pack it in. The crew was advised to start taking down the set and setting the lights for a choir concert that was on the schedule for late afternoon.
A few minutes later half of the lights in the theatre building came back on! This was a surprise, a shock in fact. Another few minutes passed, and the rest of the building had power. I hopped on the motorcycle again and dashed back to the scene of the crash. The technicians said that they had rigged a temporary fix and that the repair MIGHT hold. Or, it might now. But, it would probably hold until the part came in from Chicago the next day.
When I got back to the theatre I gave the cast and crew a choice. The facts were that the power would probably hold, but it could go out at any moment; they run out of the correct makeup; the special effect wiring and parts of the set were dismantled. If they wanted to the could still do the show, but to do that cast would have to mix their own makeup from whatever remains were left. The crew would have to put the doors back up and re-wire the special effects. And, on top of all that, it would have to be done in an extremely short period of time.
If they thought they thought they could do all that, we could still start the show at noon, but barely. Their choice.
Everyone, every cast member, every crew person, said that yes, they wanted to do that show. I said, OK, you know what to do, so go do it. They all ran off in different directions.
We started the show a few minutes late, not much. The audience was about 80% of what it would have been the evening before. The mood was positive. Everybody was up, up, and more up.
I was a bit surprised to discover that the entire show ran perfectly, with absolutely no glitches or hang-ups. That is, no glitches or hang-ups until the next to the last scene.
Jonathan Harker, Dr. Seward, and Abraham Van Helsing had Dracula cornered in front of the fireplace. Dracula shouted his evil threats, waved his arms, and … nothing. No boom, no poof, of smoke, nothing, zip. If there was a time to panic, this was it.
But, the cast did not panic because Dracula and the gang had rehearsed for just this sort of emergency. When it was apparent that the smoke effect was on vacation, Dracula stepped forward and crouched down slightly, then he stood up in a “burst” type of motion and made a move like he was knocking Harker, Seward, and Van Helsing back off their feet. In a clever bit of stage business, the trio “flew” backwards, and landed on the floor, crashing into furniture, or otherwise causing a lot of mayhem. Dracula dodges the disaster, serpentines around the mess, and runs out the French door.
That is what they trained for.
In fact, backstage the stage manager was manipulating the special effects control box. It used a double button system. To prevent accidents, there was a special plug that functioned as a master key. That key-plug was handled by one person who inserted it into the control box a few minutes before the smoke effect. When the control box indicator lights showed the proper colors, it was armed. On cue, the stage manager had to press two buttons simultaneously to fire the effect.
Right on cue the stage manager pressed the two buttons on the box and nothing happened. He pressed the button again, and still nothing happened. On stage, the heroes were closing in on the evil count, so the stage manage tried one more time. He pressed the buttons and held them down. Something in the repaired wiring was causing a problem, but by holding the buttons in the firing position the problem was over-come, and the smoke effect went off. Better late than never, there was a gigantic “BOOF!”
The effect went off just as Dracula was rising from the crouch move. As he came up, the smoke billowed in a gigantic cloud, and Harker, Seward, and Van Helsing flew backward through the air. It looked like they were blown up. They were perfectly safe, but the audience was stunned. So was the crew. Apparently, somebody had used a little too much smoke powder.
Normally, Dracula flew up the chimney by not actually flying up the chimney. The smoke and stage business by the heroic trio distracted the audience and provided cover for Dracula. In the confusion, he turned his back to the audience and drew his black cape up over his head. Then he stepped into the fireplace, it was very large, and walked through an opening in a fireplace wall. The wall was opened and closed by the same stage technician who operated Renfield’s secret panel.
That stage technician had one other important job. He had to check Dracula’s pants to see if they were on fire or smoldering from the smoke effect. Safety is the number one goal back stage at all times.
When the smoke effect went off this time, Dracula was already stepping forward and could not turn back to go into the fireplace. He emerged from the smoke, ran through the confusion, and escaped out the French door. The quick-thinking stage technician ran around the scenery on that side of the stage and patted down Drac’s cuffs.
Unfortunately, that meant when Renfield tried to “activate” the secret latch (there really wasn’t a latch, Renfield merely slapped the scenery wall) the hatch did not open. He tried a couple more time, the hatch stayed closed, so Renfield shouted something like, “I am on the waaaaay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” and ran out the French door, too.
By this time, Harker, Dr. Seward, and Van Helsing were back on their feet and the smoke had settled into a stage-filling haze. They were amazed to see Renfield running out the French door. This bit caused nearly all the lines in the remainder of the scene to become invalid.
The trio’s improvisational experience, they had studied improv in acting class, kicked in, and they invented their concluding lines on the spot.
“Where did they go?”
“They ran out the French door!”
“Where does that path go?”
“I don’t know. It must go to Dracula’s castle.”
“Let’s go after them.”
“OK, that’s a good idea.”
“Here, you take the cross, you take this Bible, and I will take that stake over here!”
“Oh, yes, that’s a good idea!”
“Right, let’s go!”
“That way, that way …”
And the ran out the French door.
I was standing in the lighting control booth with the lighting operator. He, Tony, was sitting with his hands on his head and his elbows on the control console. His mouth was hanging open. I think he was in a little shock.
I said, “Tony, that’s the end of the scene.”
He said, “Huh, what?”
“That’s the end of the scene. There’s a blackout here.”
“Blackout, blackout!!” and with that Tony leaned over the control console and used his arms to “sweep” all the control sliders to zero. The stage went dark.
Normally, the blackout is finessed somewhat more than that. But, Tony was so stunned by the craziness on stage that he had not fully prepared for the final scene, and just swept the console to black by pulling all the control sliders to the zero setting.
Over the intercom I heard the stage manager call the cue number and “go”. Tony resurrected the lights, somehow, and there was Dracula in his coffin. Only problem is that I could see that Drac was not in the box correctly.
The audience could not properly see the vampire in his coffin if it was perfectly flat on stage. It was, in fact, rigged on a slant and all Dracula had to do was duck under the back of the coffin and sit on a chair. His head appeared in the coffin at the top of a fake body. Then the heroes could give old Drac the “what-fer” and that would be the end of that little concern.
I could see that they didn’t have time to get Dracula properly seated under the coffin, and that he was somehow sort of jammed in there. The crew had draped black cloth over anything that they know the audience was not supposed to see and signaled the stage manager.
They did the final cue sequence, performed the curtain call, and cleared.
The audience, they were ecstatic with a standing ovation and the whole shebang.
The curious thing is, except for the people who were familiar with how we were doing the show, nobody out front knew that we had any problem at all. I recall one person who had seen parts of rehearsals saying that she liked the finished product better. Everyone else I spoke to was positive that the conclusion was brilliant and spectacular.
I had to agree, it was spectacular. It also has provided nearly 40 years of stories.