Few figures cast their shadows over storytelling quite like Frankenstein’s monster and Dracula. While the Gothic tales from which they emerged fall in and out of fashion, the pair certainly seem to have sprung back into life recently with the release of Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu and Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein leading a wave of recent adaptations. But what is it about these centuries-old tales – one a Promethean creation myth, the other about fear of the unknown – that compels contemporary storytellers to keep blowing the cobwebs off and telling them anew? Two theatremakers at the Fringe are breathing new life into the characters, which they see as conduits for our contemporary anxieties, with puppets.
When Mary Shelley wrote “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus way back in 1818 during a rainy summer in Geneva,” says Michael Hockey, speaking to us about his show TO BE FRANK, “she didn’t realise that she was basically creating the new genre of science fiction.” It’s no wonder, then, that when Shelley’s work was first anonymously published, against a backdrop of huge scientific progress, it captured imaginations. Pair the recent leaps in medical science with the nascent discovery of electricity, and the question hung heavy in the air: Could science give life? What would it mean to cross that divine threshold? “The idea of creating consciousness by our own hand has kept creative imaginations alive all the way up to now,” he says. “We keep asking, what would that creation be like, alive but not born, and how much of ourselves would exist inside of it?”
Hockey hopes that his show, a punk-soundtracked take on the classic featuring a balloon puppet, manages to share his take on that answer in his own “disastrously silly” way. After studying at the École Philippe Gaulier, the preeminent clowning school nestled in France’s capital, he began working on it in 2022, as “an antidote to the constant human normalcy” of being alive; something that all of us can admit that we never once consented to on an individual level. It’s in this universal feeling that he feels we can all relate to when we see the monster, “a being that didn’t ask to exist [and] who must figure it out as they go.” And while we wrestle with our own place in the world, the question over responsibility when creating conscious life “is only becoming more and more relevant as technology quickens its pace,” says Hockey. Indeed, recent takes on the Frankenstein tale have included M3GAN, about an AI powered child’s companion turned bad. The light-hearted pastiche belies a growing concern around the abandon with which Silicon Valley startups like OpenAI and Palantir are approaching delving into uncharted scientific waters.
“Stories about death make us feel more alive,” says Yngvild Aspeli, echoing Hockey’s interpretation. She is the director of Dracula: Lucy’s Dream, which features a giant puppet version of its eponymous creature (something the company, Plexus Polaire, is known for, having captured audiences with Moby Dick). Though paradoxical, she believes “we are attracted to the things we are afraid of, maybe because they show us that we are part of something bigger.” The ‘Lucy’ in the play’s title is Lucy Westenra, who, seduced into being Dracula’s first victim, embodies this paradox. Told finally from her perspective, the story invites the question: what are the constraints on her life, her autonomy as a 19th Century English woman, that the creature’s irresistible pull brings to light?
The question evokes Hockey’s theory of the constancy from which we all seek to break free. At a time when women – particularly in the UK, US and beyond – face a renewed cultural pushback against their own agency amidst a shift towards cultural conservatism (see: the rise of the ‘tradwife’ aesthetic online and a rising American movement to ‘repeal the 19th [amendment which gave women the vote]’), that repression risks dominating us even more strongly. Like Lucy, perhaps we are all sleepwalking our way to our fate. But just as Aspeli believes in “art’s capacity to make you feel and think,” Hockey sees a growing appetite “for the grand, the theatrical, for the camp horror [of early Hollywood],” which can reawaken us to our childlike sense of wonder. Might their giant, Grand-Guignol style puppets be what can circumvent our adult complacency and call us to action?
“Puppets being dead things coming to life,” says Aspeli, “they somehow become a medium that puts us in contact with the invisible. Using puppets, we can make abstract – and existential – themes accessible and therefore make the incomprehensible part of life a bit more concrete and comprehensible.”
Ultimately though, neither Hockey nor Aspeli wish to enforce a specific meaning on their audiences. They know the festival will attract thousands, from all over the world, each carrying their own baggage. “Telling the story of a vampire opens up for different interpretations and echoes themes like attraction and abuse of power, trauma and addiction, but the concrete context will probably differ depending on the person seeing it and their personal experiences and preoccupations,” says Aspeli. At the end of it all, the aim is catharsis.
Hockey says, “I think that the act of sitting in a room with others and laughing about some deep dark anxiety or fear that you thought may have just been your own is one of the best forms of catharsis that there is. It is great to have a fool on stage to laugh at (or laugh with) really, because it allows us to accept the fool within ourselves. Although straight dramas do a great job of reflecting our anxieties back at us, it gets heavy and life can be tough enough these days.”
TO BE FRANK, Pleasance Courtyard, 5-30 Aug (not 12, 19, 26), 2.05pm
Dracula: Lucy’s Dream, Pleasance at EICC, 6-29 Aug (not 12, 19, 26), 5.30pm