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Imagining a New Vampire
Playwright/novelist Suzy McKee Charnas on her "Vampire Dreams"

Suzy McKee Charnas (photo: Damian Sandone)

The novel from which "Vampire Dreams" is drawn began as a story about a Modern vampire, Edward Weyland, told by people whose lives he changed. I had Seen the revival of Dracula in New York and a play called "The Passion of Dracula" at the Cherry Lane Theatre, and I came away unsatisfied by the super-romantic presentation of the vampire as a Byronic hero. I decided to write about one who wasn't some tragical, medieval nobleman swooning over the necks of pretty women, but a natural, secretive predator a kind of saber-tooth tiger prowling the modern world in the guise of a man.

Weyland got a good grip on me, though, and I could see that a whole book was inevitable and that pretty soon I would have to get into my vampire's own point of view. Avoiding the usual romantic models of the creature (and not being a vampire myself), I had no idea of what was going on in there, so I used the device of forcing him into therapy so that in revealing himself to his therapist, he would reveal himself to me as well. He did, so successfully that this chapter of the novel, published separately under the title "Unicorn Tapestry," won me the Nebula Award for best novella in the fantasy/science fiction genre in 1980.

I started getting notes and phone calls from strangers asking for the right (on spec; we would "split the profits" later) to make a stage-play from the prize-winning novella. My husband said, "Why not write it yourself?" I objected that I was not a playwright, and that I had no great experience with theatre to draw on either: Though born and raised in Manhattan, I had avoided theatre when I'd lived there, finding it false and pretentious. But I think I'd been secretly converted since then by many seasons attending the Santa Fe Opera, where the beauty of the music had simply overwhelmed rationality. Next time I visited the City I saw plays six nights out of seven (plus two matinees), and I came away stunned by the inventiveness, the intensity, and the sheer physical nerve and power of theatre. So much so that I set to work writing my own play, "Vampire Dreams."

I've had the best time in the world shaping and reshaping this script for the stage, learning from each production how to improve it and how to make plenty of room for the actors and crew to work both outward and inward from the words on the page. (This is about cutting excess words, a tough job for a writer. The first advice I got was from an actor who said, "Oh, don't bother putting in stage directions; the first thing we do is cross all that out anyway.")

Mark J. Nichols, Carrie Wilshusen (Damian Sandone photo)

As a fiction author, I create little paper-and-ink machines (books) designed to translate a story from inside my head to inside the heads of readers; theatre is the only way I can see this process work. A group of people literally ?act out? such a translation and give it back to me (and to the audience), which is magic. And it changes each time: I've seen an "ageless," sinuously beautiful Weyland acted by a 23-year-old dancer; a slyly wicked Weyland acted by a suave actor with a goatee and a bald-spot; an alien Weyland acted by a martial artist who brought to the part the most terrifying, understated physical threat. What will we see this time?

Each new presentation opens fresh vistas for me on something that is no longer just my own creation, even now, twenty years after the story first came out. What a thrill! What a gift.

The New York premiere of Vampire Dreams is a production of Mefisto Theatre Co. at Altered Stages, 212 W. 29th Street, directed by Matthew van Waaden and starring Mark Nicholas, Kate Lunsford, Damien Midkiff, and Carrie Wilshusen. December 1-18, Wednesdays through Mondays at 8 p.m., Sunday matinees at 3. $12. 212-760-5940.

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