{"id":9654,"date":"2023-06-02T12:39:44","date_gmt":"2023-06-02T17:39:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/liftoffnews.com\/?p=9654"},"modified":"2023-06-02T12:39:44","modified_gmt":"2023-06-02T17:39:44","slug":"the-counts-curtain-call","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/liftoffnews.com\/?p=9654","title":{"rendered":"The Count’s Curtain Call"},"content":{"rendered":"

The crimson curtains rise. The boundaries of reality dissolve. Time stands still, leaving only the haunting echo of one name\u2026 Dracula.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In Bram Stoker\u2019s timeless masterpiece, <\/span>Dracula, <\/span><\/i>a mesmerizing fusion of horror, seduction, and eternal longing awaits, beckoning the audience into a world where the line between life and death is blurred. Many students participated in the play including senior Jett Holbert as Dr. Seward, junior Matthew Lamb as Professor Van Helsing, junior Nicholas Connel as Renfield, and senior Owen Fraley as Count Dracula.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Fraley hadn\u2019t performed in theater until this year. \u201cMy first time doing theater was playing King Triton in [the Mount St. Mary production of] <\/span>The Little Mermaid<\/span><\/i>,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was a new experience for me, but I ended up really enjoying it so I decided to try out for the spring play.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Fraley originally wanted to play Renfield, a mental patient who becomes Dracula\u2019s minion. \u201cI felt that I would be best suited to play Renfield,\u201d he said. \u201cHe\u2019s a really crazy guy, so I thought it would be fun to play him. However, no one could really do Dracula\u2019s Transylvanian accent except me, so Mrs. [Carrey] Reynolds cast me as Dracula. At first, she was unsure about having a ginger playing Dracula. No one had ever heard of\u00a0[a red-headed Dracula]\u00a0before. But it ended up working just fine.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Mrs. Reynolds had initially intended for the play to be <\/span>Mr. Roberts, <\/span><\/i>a comedy. However, because of casting issues, she switched the play. \u201cBack in 2020, Mrs. Reynolds wanted to do a play called <\/span>Mr. Roberts<\/span><\/i>,\u201d said Fraley. \u201cThey had already started rehearsing but couldn\u2019t perform it because of the pandemic. <\/span>Dracula <\/span><\/i>has such a small cast, Mrs. Reynolds was really surprised as to how many people tried out. She felt conflicted because she obviously wanted to cast a lot of people. As a result, she decided to switch the play to <\/span>Mr. Roberts, <\/span><\/i>which had a big cast. So we had all those people cast, and we were wanting to do a read-through of the play, but the people didn\u2019t show up. So Mrs. Reynolds switched it back to <\/span>Dracula<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBelieve it or not, we were actually pretty behind,\u201d said Fraley. \u201cWe were at school every single day from when we were cast, in February, until the actual play at the end of April. I had to quit my job because it was so intense; there was no time for anything else.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Another important member of the play was senior Mason Walsh. He worked on the sound and spotlight. \u201cI enjoyed working with the cast; I thought they were good people,\u201d he said. \u201cA long time ago when we auditioned, I wrote that I\u2019d be willing to help with the sound. I kind of like to help with behind-the-scenes types of stuff. And this wasn\u2019t too technical, so it was kind of fun.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Walsh recalls a funny moment from the play. He said, \u201cMy favorite memory was when Miles [Tillemans, who played Butterworth] dangled the rat and dropped it on opening night. I think that part is the funniest scene in the play, and Miles dropping it made it even funnier.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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The crimson curtains rise. The boundaries of reality dissolve. Time stands still, leaving only the haunting echo of one name\u2026 Dracula.\u00a0\u00a0 In Bram Stoker\u2019s timeless masterpiece, Dracula, a mesmerizing fusion of horror, seduction, and eternal longing awaits, beckoning the audience into a world where the line between life and death is blurred. Many students participated…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":89,"featured_media":9655,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[196],"tags":[143],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/liftoffnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/image-3.png?fit=970%2C665&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3xfZw-2vI","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/liftoffnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9654"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/liftoffnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/liftoffnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liftoffnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/89"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liftoffnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9654"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/liftoffnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9699,"href":"https:\/\/liftoffnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9654\/revisions\/9699"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liftoffnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/liftoffnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liftoffnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liftoffnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}