Following the success of Crime and Punishment, A Comedy and Ebenezer Scrooge’s BIG San Diego Christmas Show, writing team Gordon Greenberg and Steve Rosen are back with their newest play, Dracula, A Comedy of Terrors. We thought it would be fun to ask them to interview each other about it. Here is a transcript from that interview.

Gordon Greenberg: Here we are, back in beautiful San Diego to present our third play at The Old Globe: Dracula, A Comedy of Terrors. They want us to talk about our creative process. This was an extremely fun show to write, don’t you think Steve? Steve?

Steve Rosen: (soft snoring noises) Huh?! Wha?! Gordon? Oh, thank goodness! Where were you? I was so worried!

GG: What are you talking about? I’m early! We said 3 o’clock, it’s 2:58.

SR: Silly Gordon, I meant 3 a.m. And please use a coaster if you’re going to put a glass on my wood coffin table.

GG: I hesitate to ask, but what’s going on here?

SR: I think people should know that just because we write comedies doesn’t mean we’re not serious about our work. Like Daniel Day Lewis is a “method” actor who actually lives as his characters, I want audiences to know we’re “method” writers.

GG: Ah, so you’re living as a vampire now. That must be why you’re wearing a cape. Moving on. I think it’s important for audiences to understand why we’ve chosen to adapt Bram Stoker’s gothic thriller into a comedy.

SR: Oh, great idea… I give up, why?

GG: Originally it was because we were commissioned, and we loved the idea. As we read the novel and researched the context in which it was written, we became excited about the agelessness (no pun…) of the story. We asked ourselves why Stoker might have written this. What was going on in his life and how were his ideas and images metaphors for the world as he saw it.

SR: Those are tough questions. I’d like to use my phone-a-friend. Oh wait, you’re already here.

GG: Bram Stoker began writing Dracula one month after Oscar Wilde was imprisoned for gross indecency in May 1895. As manager of the Lyceum Theatre in London (current home of The Lion King), he met a lot of important people, including Walt Whitman, with whom he developed an epistolary relationship.

SR: What’s an Episcopalian relationship?

GG: You’d have to ask my in-laws. An epistolary relationship is one in which the primary means of communication is letter writing. In those letters, there is a sense of deep admiration and homoeroticism, even referring to each other as “our kind.” It is also notable that Stoker married late in life (for a Victorian) into a celibate relationship with a woman previously connected to Wilde. When we went back to the novel with this lens, a certain queerness revealed itself. Dracula is drawn as a charismatic pansexual for whom enough is never enough. For example, when Harker first arrives at Dracula’s castle, the female vampires jump at him, but Dracula claims him. “This man belongs to me!” The very description of Dracula—pale complected, ruby lipped with dark elegant cape—was redolent of Oscar Wilde.

SR: Oscar Wilde was gay?! I am learning so much today. Why do you think this play is important right now?

GG: Dracula is a narcissist, with an endless supply of everything he wants: money, sex, even time. Since value is often defined by scarcity, it all becomes worthless to him. So he pursues more and more, chasing the feeling he used to get from everyday pleasures. His life has become about extremes. And like many of us in a world of fast and fleeting pleasures, he is searching for meaning. As one of the female vampires says to him in the original novel, “You yourself never loved. You never love!” He has spent so much time and energy trying to satisfy the bottomless well of his own desires that he has never felt true love, putting someone else’s needs before his own. He’s a decadent, spoiled child/rock star amongst repressed Victorians. It’s a stark juxtaposition.

SR: Stoker took it super seriously. Which makes it perfect to adapt comedically.

GG: Exactly. And there are puppets! Which we love. Here, read this notecard.

SR: “How is this show similar to the others we’ve done here, and how is it different?”

GG: Great question, Steve. Like Scrooge and Crime and Punishment, Dracula features a cast of five extraordinary performers fully committing to the sincerity of the insane world we’ve placed them in. And we’ve doubled down on quick costume changes and actors playing multiple roles, sometimes even conversing with themselves. 

SR: And it’s different because… this one’s about a vampire. Like me. 

GG: I hope audiences in San Diego have a great time seeing their favorite vampire story told in a way that makes them both laugh and appreciate how precious life is. Hopefully it will encourage them to spend more time doing things they love with people they love. Speaking of, wanna go grab some dinner before the show?

SR: Yes! Can we do Italian? I’m in the mood for pesto!

GG: But you’re a vampire now. Pesto has garlic. 

SR: It does?! Then I hereby conclude my time as a vampire. Let’s go.

GG: You’re still wearing the cape.

SR: Mind your own business, it’s slimming.