A GREAT PLAY FOR HALLOWEEN MONTH: I Interview Bradley Walton About Their Play, "Villains and Zombies"

 

Angry Zombie Nate Feleke, Photo by Sophia Kurzius

Here we are, Halloween Month still marching on to the final big day, and it is time for me to talk about another play that I think is perfect to produce during the scary season. It is called Villains and Zombies, by my playwright pal Bradley Walton. The show is unique in that it takes the idea of super villains, which we are all familiar with in comics and movies and television, and places them on stage. I was completely fascinated at the idea of directing a graphic novel in a theatrical setting, something one does not get the chance to do very often--- add in the horror element with zombies, some philosophical discussions about redemption, and flawed but relatable characters (not to mention the chance for some disgusting zombie makeup), and you have a perfect show that presses all of my geek buttons.

When I first started publishing plays, I reached out to playwrights who were being published in my market for advice and commiseration, not really expecting people to get back to me. I was mistaken--- most of them did write back to me, but Bradley did even better by calling me up, chatting with me for the better part of an hour and giving me advice and telling me about their experience in the business.

Bradley was generous enough to take the time and answer some questions about the writing of Villains and Zombies, comics, and why zombies are so scary.

Playwright Bradley Walton

BOBBY: One of the reasons I wanted to direct Villains and Zombies is because I loved comics growing up, and your rarely see superhero (or in this case, super villain) stories told on the stage. I know you've forgotten more about comics than I will ever know, and I'm curious what inspired you to take a comic book type story like this (or your excellent play Higher Power) and create it specifically for the stage?

BRADLEY: My answer to this is probably going to be horribly disappointing. Basically, I needed to write a play for my school that year (as I do every year) and a comic book-type story is what was rolling around in my head. Ditto for Higher Power. You can tell any genre of story on the stage, you just have to adapt it to fit within your resources and what’s possible in a live performance environment. That can be constraining, but it can also inspire you to get creative. It also forces you to focus on character rather than the fantastical action stuff, which was fine with me because I was much more interested in exploring how having super powers influenced who the characters were as people.  So it was largely a matter of “This is what I’m going to write this year” and it just happened to be a comic book-style story.

BOBBY: One of my favorite special series when I was collecting was Batman Vs. Predator, in large part because it combined my beloved Batman with a horror creature like Predator. I also collected a Dracula comic series and a brief run of Morbius the Vampire. Were there any specific comics with elements of horror that inspired your writing of Villains and Zombies? Why do you think superhero stories tend to blend so well with elements of the horror genre?

BRADLEY: Funny you should mention Dracula. I used to collect sketches of Dracula that I commissioned from artists at comic book conventions. It was something everyone was familiar with and felt free to put their own spin on, so it made for a good subject. But to answer the question...no, not that I’m aware of.  I’m actually not much of a horror fan at all.  (Very much in contrast to my kid.)  I’m pretty sure I was reading The Walking Dead at that point, but I have zero recollection of it rattling around in my head at all as I was working on this.  (In contrast, J. Michael Straczynski’s Supreme Power was definitely rattling around in my head.) The zombies were really just a device to put a group of deeply flawed characters in a desperate situation that would force them to reevaluate themselves and undergo significant personal growth in a very short period of time.  But I do think horror and superheroes blend well, and that’s because they can both involve fantastical elements.  If you can accept that a person has super powers, then using those powers to fight reanimated corpses isn’t a stretch at all.  Ditto for giving those powers to reanimated corpses, which Marvel has done in its Marvel Zombies comics and also recently on the animated What If…? series.

Full Cast photo from Foxcroft Academy's production, 2014

BOBBY: Another reason I loved producing the play with my high school group was that it led to a great deal of interesting discussions and character work. Many heavy and important themes are in this, which, to be honest, surprised a great number of my colleagues who came to see the show. They did not expect a play about villains battling zombies to carry themes such as redemption, the shades of gray between good and evil, loyalty, loss, guilt and even how a marital relationship can strain and break. Can you tell me a bit about how you decided to explore these kinds of themes through this story and these characters?

 BRADLEY:  Aside from the two main characters and their ex-marital relationship that serves as the backbone of play, along with the basic concept, setting, and the ending... everything was made up on the fly as I wrote, and I wrote pretty quickly.  It was kind of amazing.  I’d just reach blindly into my head for the next thing that I needed and there it was.  And very little revision was needed afterwards.  So it really wasn’t a conscious decision to explore those themes, so much as “that’s just what came out.”  As to why that’s what came out, I’d say it was because I was a fan of dark, character-driven superhero comics, so that’s where my brain went.  It probably helped that I knew exactly how the play would end, and I was always writing with that specific direction in mind.

With respect to the divorced couple who are the play’s two main characters...I’m very happily married and have been for 25 years.  When I write about couples in relationships, to some extent I’m always drawing on my relationship with my wife.  The two characters in the play had a marriage that was grounded in causing mayhem together as super villains.  They were forced to go into hiding when something happened that made the world too dangerous to be a super villain, and without the mayhem, their marriage fell apart.  But they still love each other.  I can relate to that.  I can write that.  So I did. 

BOBBY: What do you think it is about zombies that makes them so scary to us, but also so very popular in our entertainment?

BRADLEY:  They’re people.  Or at least, they used to be.  They could be someone we love.  They could be us.  We can easily see a dark reflection of ourselves in them, which is what makes them great metaphors for other things...mindless consumers, mindless followers of some particular ideology, mindless pretty-much-anything-you-can-think-of.  They’re not complicated or difficult to understand.  They can be physically horrific to look at....or not.  Zombies are incredibly versatile.

BOBBY:  And finally: what advice do you have for any school or community theater group out there that is interested in producing Villains and Zombies?  (Note:  As someone who has directed a popular production in my home town, I highly recommend it!)

BRADLEY:  When I did the play with a group of high school students, they had some difficulty relating to the characters.  The super powers had nothing to do with it.  It was the grounded-in-the-real-world stuff...marriage, divorce, reconciling, going into hiding, giving up the thing that gives your life meaning, being a criminal, choosing to be something other than what you’ve been  your entire life...they had very little personal experience to draw on relating to these things.  So if you’re doing this play with younger actors (or even older ones), plan to spend some time working on them getting to know and understand their characters.  

From a purely technical standpoint, there’s some offstage dialogue at the end of the play that’s easy for the audience to miss because there’s a lot going on.  Make sure that dialogue is clear, audible, and try to find appropriate beats in the action to insert it.

Also, if I was writing the play today, I would probably have given the two main characters different super villain names than North and South, because I feel like in the current political climate, those words have become more readily associated with the Civil War. I used those names because I associated them with cold and hot. No Civil War connection is implied or should be inferred.

Leah Word and Gabriel Piquette as Malin and Monstro, respectively

Again, I want to thank Bradley for taking the time to answer my questions, and to highly recommend Villains and Zombies for production. My students had a blast. I produced the play in 2014, and just a few years ago, one of the students from the show made a long post on social media about how lucky and grateful he was to be in a play that combined super villains and zombies while in high school, making the point that it is so rare to be able to portray something so cool in a high school play.

Now that's a positive impression!

If you would like to learn more about Bradley's work, and you are in luck because there is a whole lot of it!, you can do so by clicking the links below:

BRADLEY'S PLAYS AT BROOKLYN PUBLISHERS

BRADLEY'S PLAYS AT ELDRIDGE

BRADLEY'S PLAYS AT THEATREFOLK

BRADLEY'S PLAYS AT PLAYSCRIPTS, INC.

BRADLEY'S PLAYS AT BIG DOG PLAYS

BRADLEY'S PLAYS AT HEUER

BRADLEY'S PLAYS AT YouthPLAYS

And if you would like to learn about my spooky comedy for younger audiences, Are We Scared Yet?, you can do so by CLICKING HERE

Please comment below with the titles of your favorite Halloween Month plays!

And feel free to visit my book review blog, "My Only Friends Are Books" by CLICKING HERE

PLAYS FOR HALLOWEEN MONTH!: A Look at "Dracula" adapted for the stage by Steven Dietz

 

Maggie Kelleher as Lucy, Mark Nadeau as Van Helsing in the middle, and me as Dr. Seward in Lakewood Theater's production of Steven Dietz's Dracula. My character should be relieved Lucy didn't marry him, since she's an undead monster now. 

I love Halloween. I suppose that isn't rare for someone who has spent most of their life in the theater. I imagine most performers  have a soft spot for a holiday all about getting into costume and getting out of yourself for an evening...

I also love horror movies and spooky books. I'm a Maine boy, so I have read a great deal Stephen King's work, because he is our Emperor in these parts. 

I also like spooky and scary plays, or any play with a Halloween vibe, though I sometimes think they are overlooked. That's why I've decided that this month, I will highlight some plays that I think are great for October, or, as I like to call it, Halloween Month. I figured I would start with Dracula by Steven Dietz, based on the novel by Bram Stoker.  I played Dr. Seward in a production at Lakewood Theater, and will share photos along the way...

Me as Dr. Seward, who is facing down madman and Dracula minion, Renfield, played by Bart Shattuck.

I have always loved vampire stories, so, as soon as I was old enough, I read Stoker's novel Dracula, the father of them all. I remember rushing to see Francis Ford Coppola's film adaptation when I was in middle school (probably too R-rated for me at the time, but I had cool parents), and while I loved it (I was like 12--- what wasn't to love?), I also wondered why every adaptation of Stoker's novel seemed to add a love story that just isn't there in the book. 

I was happy to be cast as Dr. Seward in Lakewood's production. Both of my parents had been in a different adaptation of Dracula when I was a boy, and I remember watching it over and over again. So being in my own production felt like a foregone conclusion, and I was happy to be in this particular production with my friends Jak, Maggie, Nick, Hannah, Jen, and everyone else involved. 

Playing Dr. Seward was a special treat, because I particularly like how Dietz treats the character in his adaptation.  Adapting a novel, particularly a longish one like Dracula, is not an easy task. Obviously novels and plays are very different art forms. But Dietz is faithful to the source material, while making a very theatrical play, condensing events and keeping scenes moving quickly from one to the next. 

Maggie (as Lucy) gets a nice necklace from Mark as Van Helsing, while Hannah as Mina and I look on and try not to be bothered by the smell.

Dietz wisely does not dramatize each of Lucy's suitors, though they are all mentioned. Dr. Seward stands in for the rest of them, and Dietz gives him a lovely monologue as he proposes to Lucy. It shouldn't be a spoiler to say that she rejects him, though in the script, he sees the rejection in her face, but continues his speech as a good gentleman should, telling her he will always be there for her when she needs him. From this speech and scene, Dietz continues  the speech as Seward decides to take comfort in his work, and uses this transition to a seamless scene with Renfield. Again, I am fond of how Dietz is able to keep the action moving with transitions like this... with so many scenes, a production can die of boredom unless the script keeps them moving. 

What could be wrong with Lucy? I hope it's not a freakin' Dracula!

I am of the opinion that live theater can actually create a creepier experience with scary stories than movies, due to the fact that it is life, happening in the moment to be shared with the audience. When it's going well, there is a lovely energy in the air. 

And, trust me, don't skimp on the blood. 

Take a bow!

So if you're looking for a good Dracula adaptation, I am a fan of the one by Steven Dietz. Sure, there are probably wilder ones and musical ones, but Dietz is true to the story and has plenty of atmosphere, and, in my experience, can be as simple or as complex to stage as your production will allow. If you are interested in learning more about licensing it, you can visit its page on Dramatists Play Service's website by CLICKING HERE

If you are looking for a fun and funny spooky play for younger audiences, may I suggest my play Are We Scared Yet?  from Elderidge Publishing? It takes some popular spooky stories and urban legends and gives them a fun little twist. You can learn more about that play by CLICKING HERE. 

What is your favorite scary/spooky/Halloweeny play? Let me know in comments!