Dramatic Elements Of Dracula Essay

Great Essays
Shake & stirs adaptation of Dracula followed the plot of the original novel by Bram Stoker. Throughout the performance, Michael Futcher’s directorial choices regarding the elements of drama, acting skills and the gothic style made for a mostly effective creation and portrayal of the dramatic meaning, that there is evil in everything and everyone, and we fear it. The effectiveness dramatic meaning was conveyed through the successfulness of the dramatic action.
The directorial choices by Michael Futcher in Shake & stir’s production of Dracula created powerful dramatic action and meaning to the audience, through the use of the elements of drama including mood, tension and place. Firstly, his use of spot lights positioned on Dracula when he was hanging upside down heightened the mood as it created a feeling
…show more content…
Furthermore, he creatively exploited tension of relationships to effectively portray the dramatic meaning through the utilisation of the relationships between Lucy and Jack; specifically when Lucy had been bitten by a vampire. Their interactions advanced the dramatic meaning as the audiences were confronted with the evil that had been placed in Lucy, and consequently, how Jack had to cope with it. Secondly, the relationship between Johnathon and Dracula at the commencement of the play conveyed the dramatic meaning through the suspicions created by Johnathon in relation to Dracula’s identity and evil motives. This relationship further developed the dramatic meaning as Johnathon feared the evil in Dracula. Finally, Futcher’s effective creation of tension of mystery heightened the dramatic meaning throughout the performance; the audience, alongside the characters, were left to question about the evil in Dracula, and the evil he placed in other characters by biting them, such as Lucy. In addition to this, Futcher enhanced the dramatic meaning and action through his effective employment of place. This was

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Have you ever got yourself in a tough situation? If so, what did you do or what would you do? The author of the novel “Dracula”, Bram Stoker, provides an example of how a person in a predicament should not let him or herself be engulfed by fear and helplessness; this is done through the use of characterization. When you let yourself to be overcome by fear and helplessness, your mind can not be able to think straight.…

    • 401 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    This interrelatedness in terms of grieving also aided in creating tension, as each story seemed to build up more, and affect both the actor and the audience more prominently. Thus, it is evident that dramatic meaning was created simply by the play’s…

    • 1065 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Putting his readers on an emotion roller coaster by the way he told his stories and the people whose he chose to tell.…

    • 113 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In Thomas C. Foster’s book, How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Foster continues to educate and inform readers about how books should not be taken at face value and usually always contain hidden themes, morals, and symbolism. First, Foster continues informing readers about how to better analyze novels in chapter 3, Nice to Eat You: Acts of Vampires. In chapter 3 of his novel, Foster describes the how the classic vampire story is not what it seems. For example, in Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula, Stoker portrays the vampire, Dracula, as an “attractive, alluring, dangerous, and mysterious man who tends to focus on beautiful, unmarried women,” (Foster, 25). Dracula seduces his victims into becoming like him and steals their innocence.…

    • 880 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    William Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Bram Stoker’s Dracula were written three centuries apart in vastly different social climates. Macbeth was born from the beginning the English renaissance, as King James took the throne after the long reign of “The Virgin Queen,” Elizabeth I.. Dracula was written during the tail end of the Victorian era, a time of rampant social anxiety and unrest stemming from the Industrial Revolution and new ideological movements such as women’s suffrage. Despite the differing circumstances of their writing, Macbeth and Dracula exhibit many commonalities: both utilize dramatic, old buildings as their primary settings to create an uneasy atmosphere, both rely on leaving the state of reality ambiguous to create tension , and both have active female characters who reveal period gender norms of their respective social climates,…

    • 1253 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Dracula and Wuthering Heights: Did They Conform? Both the novel Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte and Dracula by Bram Stoker conform to the societal norms of their time but not in a direct way. The characters in Wuthering Heights like Catherine for example, do make decisions like marrying Edgar Linton instead of Heathcliff which is a reasonable decision as she wants to keep her status and be rich. The characters in Dracula, especially the females, conform to society as they do not meddle in other people’s business and the men go out to work.…

    • 1611 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Shakespeare’s most famous play is called Romeo and Juliet, although traditionally a script now has been portrayed as a film various times. Two versions have been broadcasted and presented the most due to popularity, Baz Luhrmann’s 1997 and Franco Zeffirelli 1968. Both films used the same traditional language and actions however set in different eras used different costumes and props. This is a comparison between the two films Act one Scene one. ------…

    • 1613 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In Bram Stoker’s, Dracula, we see the New Woman first being introduced to the reader by the three women that Jonathan Harken encounters in Count Dracula’s castle. Mina and Lucy are a representation of the good, traditional Victorian women in comparison to those three women. In her article "Bram Stoker 's Dracula and Late-Victorian Advertising Tactics: Earnest Men, Virtuous Ladies, and Porn", Tanya Pikula argues that “Dracula not only functions as a ‘kind of ‘test-bed’ for competing arguments and sensibilities,’ but it reflects the ways in which its society’s ambivalent responses to consumerism and advertising were repeatedly elaborated through models of femininity and female sexuality”. I strongly disagree with because I do no think that the…

    • 1278 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    What happened to the classics? Over the years the world has come to see many different changes of the living dead. In literature one of the major changes that has been seen are the changes in vampires. The classic vampire novel Dracula by Bram Stoker has differences between the vampires when compared to Interview with a Vampire by Anne Rice.…

    • 1336 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Great Essays

    This is crucial to the play’s storyline following the theme of recognition as it contributes deeply to the reader feeling what the character’s are feeling on…

    • 1860 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    It is often very easy too see both similarities and differences between novels and the movies produced in their illustration. This holds true when looking at Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, which was originally published in 1897, and the movie created after it in 1992. We will look at how these similarities and differences exist along the theme of sex and the desires and temptations the role they play in both the novel and the movie. Sex and desire is present in both the settings, but the representation of sexual desire changes from the 1897 novel to the modern film in 1992.…

    • 1149 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Vampires have changed over the years and the depictions of vampires through the years give us an idea about the anxieties of that time period, the way the people viewed the pressing issues of that time period. I am going to discuss the similarities and the differences between Bram stoker’s Dracula and the film Nosferatu. Dracula was portrayed as a tall old man with a white moustache who appeared to be a human and he had a charm about him normally associated with aristocrats whereas in the film Nosferatu, Count Orlok’s appearance is nightmarish and closer to that of a monster than of a human. He is shown to have misshapen eyebrows, huge pointed ears, long claws which are sharp for nails, walks around in an abnormal way and does not have any of the charm of Dracula. While Count Dracula has shape shifting abilities where he can transform into a wolf, dog and a bat, Count Orlok does not transform or change into anything.…

    • 959 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    An Analysis of Dennis Foster 's “The Little Children Can Be Bitten” Dracula by Irish author Bram Stoker is a seminal piece of Gothic horror fiction. The novel 's portrayal of an undead master (the titular character) being chased by Van Helsing and his band of vampire hunters has been consumed for over a century. Dennis Foster 's critical article “The little children can be bitten: A Hunger for Dracula” uses a psychoanalytic approach to analyze this influential work of literature. In his article, Foster makes a compelling, successful argument about the nature of the novel and how it relates to the inner workings of the human mind. He posits that the visceral, unchained figure of Dracula represents the innate desire for the mother and a return…

    • 772 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    A Christmas Carol Critique

    • 1214 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Upon seeing A Christmas Carol on the night of Friday, November 18th, I had what I thought to be a firm understanding of the Charles Dicken’s classic. It was until the show was over that I realized my previous interpretation was completely senseless, with little to no opinion deriving beyond the script. As I dove into the performance in the Joan C, Edwards playhouse, I made personal connections that I had never made before when watching other adaptions of A Christmas Carol, in particular Scrooge (1970), my father’s favorite. Every detail of this performance aided in my overwhelming positive review, asserting this play as my favorite of all the revisions I have seen.…

    • 1214 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “Story analysis of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley” Mary was born in 1797 as Mary Wollstonecraft. Just 10 days after given birth to Mary her mother had died not even knowing she gave birth to a baby girl. Mary’s father was left alone with his newborn baby and a 2 year old. Both kids were products of an affair. Mary’s father was a political activist and was known to be a brilliant man.…

    • 1000 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays