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When Dracula makes his big move to London from Transylvania in Bram Stoker’s famous novel, he brings with him 50 boxes of earth.
In the rules Stoker sets up, vampires must sleep in coffins filled with earth from their homeland.
New York-based playwright Ankita Raturi uses the image of dirt-filled coffins for her new play, “Fifty Boxes of Earth,” presented by Theater Mu and directed by KT Shorb. The show had its world premiere last weekend at Park Square Theatre in St. Paul. The work draws inspiration from “Dracula,” though it’s not strictly an adaptation of the story. Instead, Raturi uses metaphorical touchstones from the novel to reflect on how our society otherizes people with difference. Rather than a blood-sucking fiend, the story’s vampire experiences marginalization, while hegemony becomes the real villain.
I caught the matinee on Sunday during the show’s opening weekend. There was a pretty significant technical issue that caused the show to take an unplanned break, but besides that glitch, the show brought together some terrific visual design elements and choreography by Ananya Chatterjea. The show’s use of Dracula lore to explore ideas of xenophobia and bigotry was also compelling.
The Dracula character in Raturi’s script is named Q, played with enigmatic sageness by New York-based actor Che’Li. With swept short hair and a grounded bearing, Che’Li’s Q is calm, but intent on pursuing their aims.
An immigrant from an undisclosed place, Q arrives at a community garden with dirt from home. Their intention is preparing a garden plot with the earth they brought to ready for their family members, including their son, who they hope will join them in their new home.
At the community garden, Q is greeted by organizer Jon Harker, bearing a similar name to Jonathan Harker from the novel, who visits Dracula as part of a real estate negotiation, gets trapped there and nearly killed.
In Raturi’s story, Jon Harker is a bit of a bigot. Played by Alex Galick, Jon is personable and polite enough at first, but grows tense as time passes. Jon is disturbed to learn Q brought foreign dirt to the garden, and seems irked by Q’s transness, their unusual customs and their superior gardening skills.
Jon’s dislike of Q grows while his child’s affection for the new neighbor develops, perhaps because of that affection. Jon’s fear and ignorance fuel his actions, ultimately revealing him to be the monstrous one, not Q. Galick takes an understated approach to the character, not revealing his overt nastiness right away. He lets Jon’s actions, rather than attitude, reveal the kind of person he is.
Galick’s portrayal, and Raturi’s text, allows for some nuance. He clearly loves his child and fears for them, and that love and fear act as a spark for his approach to a new person they encounter who is different from them.
Jon’s child indicates a questioning of their own gender identity. They prefer to use their last name, Harker, instead of their feminine first name, for example.
As directed by Shorb, the tension between Jon and Q visibly seethes. In one scene, they stand off face-to-face atop the upper level of the garden — in a set designed by Mina Kinukawa. You can just feel the contempt between the two characters.
While the story Raturi tells veers quite a bit from that of the novel, the playwright does align with Stoker’s vampiric givens. Like Dracula in the novel, Q is deathly allergic to garlic. They also seem to thrive at night but aren’t harmed by sunlight.
Like Dracula, Q is adept at using blood as a life force, but in a way that’s quite a bit different than the novel. For one thing, Q uses their own blood, rather than murdering other people. They also don’t use the blood for their own immortality but rather as a special fertilizer for their garden.
Ultimately, Raturi employs Dracula as a framework to meditate on survival, especially for someone who is far from home and in a place that doesn’t keep them safe. The “Fifty Boxes of Earth” from the title refers to a bold act of connection to home. Rather than creepy, it’s a powerful force of strength.
Mu’s production is supplemented with a chorus of dancers, choreographed by Ananya Chatterjea. The movers at times channel seeds, at other times the life force of plants growing into being. They swirl together, employing Chatterjea’s signature style that mixes classical Indian forms with martial arts and contemporary movement. They also manipulate the plants that grow to gigantic sizes in the garden plots, in puppetry design by Oanh Vu and Andrew Young.
Mu has created a sumptuous visual work with “Fifty Boxes of Earth,” and engages with ideas that are timely and pressing. The challenge here is that by responding to a beloved and very famous story, the play inherently sets up comparisons to the original text. Raturi has inserted elements of horror and magic into her story, but the work mainly hones in on the three characters and their relationship to each other. This piece doesn’t approach the epic scale of “Dracula,” even though it has a fascinating arc to follow in its own right.
When Dracula makes his big move to London from Transylvania in Bram Stoker’s famous novel, he brings with him 50 boxes of earth.
In the rules Stoker sets up, vampires must sleep in coffins filled with earth from their homeland.
New York-based playwright Ankita Raturi uses the image of dirt-filled coffins for her new play, “Fifty Boxes of Earth,” presented by Theater Mu and directed by KT Shorb. The show had its world premiere last weekend at Park Square Theatre in St. Paul. The work draws inspiration from “Dracula,” though it’s not strictly an adaptation of the story. Instead, Raturi uses metaphorical touchstones from the novel to reflect on how our society otherizes people with difference. Rather than a blood-sucking fiend, the story’s vampire experiences marginalization, while hegemony becomes the real villain.
I caught the matinee on Sunday during the show’s opening weekend. There was a pretty significant technical issue that caused the show to take an unplanned break, but besides that glitch, the show brought together some terrific visual design elements and choreography by Ananya Chatterjea. The show’s use of Dracula lore to explore ideas of xenophobia and bigotry was also compelling.
The Dracula character in Raturi’s script is named Q, played with enigmatic sageness by New York-based actor Che’Li. With swept short hair and a grounded bearing, Che’Li’s Q is calm, but intent on pursuing their aims.
An immigrant from an undisclosed place, Q arrives at a community garden with dirt from home. Their intention is preparing a garden plot with the earth they brought to ready for their family members, including their son, who they hope will join them in their new home.
At the community garden, Q is greeted by organizer Jon Harker, bearing a similar name to Jonathan Harker from the novel, who visits Dracula as part of a real estate negotiation, gets trapped there and nearly killed.
In Raturi’s story, Jon Harker is a bit of a bigot. Played by Alex Galick, Jon is personable and polite enough at first, but grows tense as time passes. Jon is disturbed to learn Q brought foreign dirt to the garden, and seems irked by Q’s transness, their unusual customs and their superior gardening skills.
Jon’s dislike of Q grows while his child’s affection for the new neighbor develops, perhaps because of that affection. Jon’s fear and ignorance fuel his actions, ultimately revealing him to be the monstrous one, not Q. Galick takes an understated approach to the character, not revealing his overt nastiness right away. He lets Jon’s actions, rather than attitude, reveal the kind of person he is.
Galick’s portrayal, and Raturi’s text, allows for some nuance. He clearly loves his child and fears for them, and that love and fear act as a spark for his approach to a new person they encounter who is different from them.
Jon’s child indicates a questioning of their own gender identity. They prefer to use their last name, Harker, instead of their feminine first name, for example.
As directed by Shorb, the tension between Jon and Q visibly seethes. In one scene, they stand off face-to-face atop the upper level of the garden — in a set designed by Mina Kinukawa. You can just feel the contempt between the two characters.
While the story Raturi tells veers quite a bit from that of the novel, the playwright does align with Stoker’s vampiric givens. Like Dracula in the novel, Q is deathly allergic to garlic. They also seem to thrive at night but aren’t harmed by sunlight.
Like Dracula, Q is adept at using blood as a life force, but in a way that’s quite a bit different than the novel. For one thing, Q uses their own blood, rather than murdering other people. They also don’t use the blood for their own immortality but rather as a special fertilizer for their garden.
Ultimately, Raturi employs Dracula as a framework to meditate on survival, especially for someone who is far from home and in a place that doesn’t keep them safe. The “Fifty Boxes of Earth” from the title refers to a bold act of connection to home. Rather than creepy, it’s a powerful force of strength.
Mu’s production is supplemented with a chorus of dancers, choreographed by Ananya Chatterjea. The movers at times channel seeds, at other times the life force of plants growing into being. They swirl together, employing Chatterjea’s signature style that mixes classical Indian forms with martial arts and contemporary movement. They also manipulate the plants that grow to gigantic sizes in the garden plots, in puppetry design by Oanh Vu and Andrew Young.
Mu has created a sumptuous visual work with “Fifty Boxes of Earth,” and engages with ideas that are timely and pressing. The challenge here is that by responding to a beloved and very famous story, the play inherently sets up comparisons to the original text. Raturi has inserted elements of horror and magic into her story, but the work mainly hones in on the three characters and their relationship to each other. This piece doesn’t approach the epic scale of “Dracula,” even though it has a fascinating arc to follow in its own right.
