Our second installment of the Bold New Works took us to Lake Geneva, 1816. Monsters of the Villa Diodati concerned a certain summer where the literary giants of 1816 spent a summer together, and the fruits of this vacation gave us "Frankenstein" and "The Vampire". Basically, all the rules of the "living dead" that gave way to "Night of the Living Dead" and "The Walking Dead" were established in this summer. And boy, did we cover it.
This research project covered the best poetry of the finest poets ever living. It also covered the female pioneer of Science Fiction. These characters were some of the smartest humans to ever live on this earth. No pressure writing dialogue for them, right?
This show took a long time to write. Between research and language training to learn how people spoke in 1816, this one took a little longer to cook. I read all of their works and all of the books available that analyzed the content. Above is a word cloud that represents our play, and the most often used words within it.
Matt soon found a musical way into the story, Playing classical styles of the time versus rock and roll styles of the modern era. While they were innovators 200 years ago, their influence is still felt in modern times. The music needed to reflect that fact.
After Sean Thompson became unavailable due to Broadway calling, Sam Ludwig became our Lord Byron. They both were wonderful in their different ways, but I was so happy to see Sam FLOURISH in this role, and earn a Helen Hayes Award Nomination for it as well. He was the perfect host to this decadent summer.
David Landstrom was an enigmatic find as Dr. Polidori. His "Directions for John" remains one of our favorite songs that we have ever written. As the tortured and sexually repressed Doctor, he broke your heart every single night as Byron and Mary trampled all over him.
Catherine Purcell and Alan Naylor as Claire Clairmont and Percy Shelley were both incredibly in tune with their character's arc. Their tricky story details involving secret affairs while her sister, Mary was wed with Percy offer juicy plot points in the second act.
MONSTERS tells many stories and ends up with two of the most famous tales in literature, but the ideas for these came from the lives of the artists present at the Villa Diodati 200 years ago. Before Netflix, we used to get together and talk.
Susan Derry was the epitome of perfection AGAIN in this role. She simply BECAME Mary Shelley.
She is always considered our MUSE, even though she has moved north. We miss her dearly with every project we continue without her.
As we work through the "Summer of Darkness", we learn that Mary Shelley has been writing the forward of her revised version of Frankenstein after all of them are dead. In the Epilogue, we learn that even after death, her MONSTER keeps moving forward through time, and her monster still harbors all of the pain and anger that she always carried. Her monster is still alive to this day.
We are more than grateful to Mary Shelley's creation, and celebrate her in our work,
Monsters of the Villa Diodati.
