Dracula takes a darker turn at LCCT

Before Dracula ever steps into view, Las Cruces Community Theatre wants audiences looking over their shoulders. 

Breathing, whispers, and other recorded sounds will replace the usual music as patrons take their seats, while low lighting helps transform the theater before the first scene begins. The soundscape will continue through intermission, keeping audiences inside the experience even while the action pauses. 

Assistant director Matthew Esqueda, who has taken a significant role in developing the sound while working closely with the lighting designer, said the goal is to make people feel “like they’re being watched” by something waiting for an opportunity to strike. 

That presence also towers over the stage. Dracula’s castle remains visible rather than disappearing behind changing flats, giving the set a constant place in the world surrounding the characters. 

“We always wanted to keep that castle as a character in and of itself,” Esqueda said. “It is constantly looming over these people.” 

The effect has already worked on some of the people who know what is coming. During rehearsals, director Jason Wyatt recalled being startled by one sequence despite knowing how it would unfold. Esqueda pointed to the same portion of the show as the moment the performances and technical elements finally clicked. 

“The hairs on my arms were just standing up,” Esqueda said. “This is nightmare fuel brought to life.” 

The theater will open Steven Dietz’s adaptation of “Dracula” Oct. 2, taking Bram Stoker’s familiar vampire story back toward its darker roots. Rather than leaning into camp or the romantic portrayals the character has accumulated over time, Wyatt and his team are building the show around unease, psychological intensity and the challenge of frightening a crowd without the advantages of film. 

Dietz’s adaptation appealed to Wyatt because of its darker mood and ties to Stoker’s novel, particularly with the show landing in October. That vision also shaped the vampire played by Niko Goyaale, who embraces what makes Dracula monstrous. 

“I’m playing him as very much an unsympathetic, hungry beast,” Goyaale said. 

A longtime fan of vampire fiction, Goyaale has experimented with movement and voice to create qualities that film might otherwise accomplish through visual effects. She shifts between higher tones and guttural sounds while changing her physicality to suggest that Dracula is capable of more than an ordinary human body. 

The centuries-old character also moves beyond rigid ideas of how the vampire should look or sound. Goyaale said Dracula has existed so long that ordinary distinctions carry less meaning, opening the door to a more androgynous portrayal. 

That interpretation was reinforced during a virtual conversation between the cast and Dacre Stoker, an author and relative of Bram Stoker who has written extensively about the “Dracula” legacy. Wyatt said the discussion gave performers additional insight into the novel and the psychology behind their characters. 

Goyaale came away from the conversation viewing Dracula less as a tragic romantic and more as an inescapable presence. 

“Totally uncompromising force of nature,” Goyaale said. 

Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 film “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” became one of Esqueda’s references while considering how to translate horror to the stage. Its reliance on practical techniques reinforced the idea that relatively simple tricks could create an unsettling effect without digital technology. 

LCCT takes a similar hands-on route with its more gruesome moments. Stage blood, Dracula bites and other practical effects are worked into the action, creating another challenge when costumes and scenery must survive repeated performances. 

For Goyaale, that has occasionally meant confronting the less glamorous side of vampirism. During one rehearsal, corn syrup-based stage blood lingered in her mouth longer than planned, nearly ending up on a fellow cast member. 

“The physical grossness of the role” has been one of the unexpected challenges, Goyaale said. 

For Wyatt, bringing those pieces together adds another chapter to a longtime connection with the character. A horror fan, one of his earliest leading roles was Dracula in a comedy about the vampire dating. Now directing for only the second time, he said returning to the story from the other side of the stage feels like a homecoming. 

After the effects, technical work and rehearsals, Goyaale hopes the finished show restores some menace to a character whose image has been reshaped countless times in popular culture. 

“I hope they’re sinisterly terrified,” Goyaale said.