Category Archives: Press releases

Co-director Christopher Henley’s fascination for the Prince of Darkness

This article originally appeared on DCTheatreScene.com

Between Bela Lugosi and Bella from the Twilight series, there was Hammer Studios. From the late 1950s through the mid 1970s, that venerable British institution reimagined and reinvigorated the horror genre. It produced original material, movies with names like The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires, but it also returned to some of the classic narratives of the genre, and it was those versions that first introduced me to, for instance, The Phantom of the Opera. (The Hammer version starring Herbert Lom was the first version I ever saw. Whether that is the reason I prefer it to all versions I’ve seen subsequently, from stage musical to the earlier, more revered classic film versions with the Phantom played by Claude Rains and Lon Chaney, I can only speculate.) Continue reading Co-director Christopher Henley’s fascination for the Prince of Darkness

Archeologist Brian Crane excavates Dracula role, Makes It His Own

For immediate release: June 27, 2014

Brian Crane
Brian Crane

There was a time when Brian Crane, an archeologist who plays a psychiatrist in Dracula. A Love Story, had a special congress with the dead.

“While an undergraduate, I volunteered with a project at the University Museum to prepare their first computer catalog of objects,” Dr. Crane explained.  “We were working with a collection from Bronze Age burials in Russia. Our job was to check the description on a hand written index card with the objects in the corresponding box.

“My first card read ‘phalange and ring.’ A little puzzled, I opened the box, and yup, there was a ring still on the partially mummified remains of a finger. The next card read ‘ear rings.’ A little shaken by my first item, I opened this box a little more slowly. The ear rings were in the box as promised. And so was the ear.”

Crane pursued his duel career as an archeologist and an actor, finding a position at the Smithsonian after obtaining his PhD. It was not always good times. Crane recalls a particular incident  “when a forensic anthropologist colleague down the hall at the Smithsonian had a 19th-century burial in his office that still had a lot of soft tissue. The smell was so bad the entire anthropology department had to evacuate the building. They later gave him a lab. In the basement.”

Crane accumulated an impressive set of credentials in the acting profession, appearing in There is a Happiness that Morning Brings, Les Justes, Richard III, Hotel Fuck, Secret Obscenities, Small Craft Warnings, Peace, Red Noses, Edward III and Caligula. Most of his work has been with WSC Avant Bard and its predecessor company, Washington Shakespeare. “I have a tremendous amount of confidence in the work of that organization,” Crane said. “Christopher Henley and Jay Hardee worked hard to make WSC productive, and I was proud to be part of that effort.”

Dr. Crane is confident that Dracula will render the same sort of result. “I am impressed with the degree to which this play is faithful to the historical record, and also with the steps Christopher and Jay have taken to make sure that the production is accessible and emotionally satisfying. This is a big story, and they are doing it justice.”

 

A Visit to the Home of a Grisly Murderer Prepares Joe Brack for Dracula Play

Joe Brack plays Jack Klaxon, Lucy's fiancee
Joe Brack plays Jack Klaxon, Lucy’s fiancee

In 2001, a young actor performing in Bratislava, Slovakia accompanied a classmate on a clandestine visit to a garden – the garden of Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed, the butcher of Bratislava. Between 1602 and 1604 she tortured and murdered at least thirty-seven – and perhaps over a hundred – young women, beating, starving and freezing them and in some instances hacking off parts of their bodies.

“Just talking about it gives me the chills,” Joe Brack now says.

Later versions of the story – probably apocryphal – allege that Báthory bathed in the blood of her victims, in order to keep up her youthful appearance. And Brack – who has compiled an impressive list of credentials on the Washington stage (My Princess Bride, The Santaland Diaries, Astro Boy and the God of Comics, among others) – is now in rehearsal for a play involving another half-legendary character: Count Dracula, who was based (we now know) on the savage real-life aristocrat, Vlad Tepas (or “Vlad the Impaler”).

In the 2014 Capital Fringe show Dracula . A Love Story, Brack plays Jack Klaxon, a character loosely based on Jonathan Harker in the original Dracula tale.  But “Klaxon is cool and cynical, while Harker was a true believer from the outset,” Brack explains. (Bram Stoker’s novel begins with Harker visiting Dracula at his Transylvanian estate). “Jack counterbalances some of the wilder conclusions people are drawing about Vlad,” says Brack. “He’s the part of us that says, ‘yeah, right.’”

Dracula. A Love Story is a modern retelling of the Dracula legend, set in Washington, D.C. Vlad Tepas (Lee Ordeman) is a lobbyist whose dying wife Mina (Christine Hirrel) needs a companion when he is away at night, ostensibly attending social functions. He recruits Lucy Cervas (Carolyn Kashner) as Mina’s companion – and her replacement. Klaxon, Lucy’s fiancée, is concerned, as is her father Will (Brian Crane), who eventually calls in an expert, Dr. Calderone (Lynn Sharp Spears). Mr. Redland (Josh Speerstra), Tepas’ servant, completes the cast.

“This is a story about rapture,” playwright Tim Treanor says. “Lucy sees that Vlad is extraordinary and she’s hungry for that. But you can find rapture with ordinary people, doing ordinary things as well.”

“Although this is Dracula and everything, ninety percent of what goes on here is instantly recognizable from our own experiences,” Brack says. “I remember once when an ex of mine dramatically threw her engagement ring at me and stormed off,” he relates, alluding to a scene in the play. “I never heard from her again.” Brack is now married to another actor, Tonya Beckman.

#####

What:  Dracula . A Love Story
by Tim Treanor
Who: Directed By: Christopher Henley and Jay HardeeStarring: Joe Brack*, Brian Crane, Christine Hirrel, Carolyn Kashner, Lynn Sharp Spears, Josh Speerstra
Featuring: Lee Ordeman* as Dracula

Full bios can be found here.

*Members of Actors Equity Association

Where: Mountain – at Mount Vernon United Methodist Church
900 Massachusetts Ave, NW
Washington, DC   20001
When:  Saturday, July 12: 3:45pm – 5:15pm
Friday, July 18: 10:30pm – midnight
Sunday, July 20: 6:15pm – 7:45pm
Thursday, July 24: 8:15pm – 9:45pm
Saturday, July 26: 10:45pm – 12:15am
Tickets & Passes: Go to capitalfringe.org or call 866-811-4111.
Photos: High resolution photos related to our show will be available at: https://www.timtreanorauthor.com/dracula-love-story/
Dracula .
A Love Story Publicist & Contact:
Kendra Rubinfeld, KRPR, 202-681-1151,
Kendra@KendraRubinfeldpr.com
Fringe Festival Press Contact: Laura Gross, 202-695-8223, c: 202-255-2054, press@capitalfringe.org
Official Handle and Hashtags  @Count_Tepes
#draculalovestory #capfringe14


Quote about Dracula . A Love Story

Dracula. A Love Story is not just a new way of looking at an old legend. It’s a new way of looking at the legend’s values and issues in light of what we have learned since then about our passions, human psychology, and about the ambiguous nature of good and evil.”

–Tim Treanor, playwright and producer

About our Cast

Professional actors often seen on DC stages including The Kennedy Center, Studio Theater, Theater J, SCENA, Imagination Stage, Arena Stage, WSC Avant Bard and more.  Two of the actors are veterans to the Capital Fringe stage, including Joe Brack, who produced and starred in last year’s Fringe hit, My Princess Bride. Full bios can be found here.

About our Playwright

This is Tim Treanor’s second play. His first, Murder in Elsinore, enjoyed a local run. Over the past nine years, Tim Treanor has reviewed over five hundred plays for the theater website DC Theatre Scene. He’s reviewed musicals for The Sondheim Review, and is now Vice-President of the American Theatre Critics Association.

About our Co-Directors

Married couple and fathers of twins, Chris Henley and Jay Hardee continue their collaboration as co-directors in this production. Christopher Henley began acting and directing around DC with Source Theatre Company in the late 1970s. He was a founding Ensemble Member at WSC Avant Bard (formerly Washington Shakespeare Company); was its Artistic Director for more than 16 years; and continues as its Artistic Director Emeritus and as a member of the Acting Company.  Jay Hardee has been acting in the DC theater scene since 2005 and directing since 2008 with WSC Avant Bard, Church Street Theater and Clark Street Playhouse.

About our Company

This is the debut play for Wry Productions, an offshoot of Wry Press, which has published Tim Treanor’s political thriller, The Seduction of Braulio Jules.

About Capital Fringe

Capital Fringe is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization founded in 2005 with the purpose of connecting exploratory artists with adventurous audiences by creating outlets and spaces for creative, cutting-edge, and contemporary performance in the District. Capital Fringe’s vital programs ensure the growth and continued health of the local and regional performing arts community by helping artists become independent producers while stimulating the vibrant cultural landscape in our city.

 

Christopher Henley on co-directing Dracula with his spouse Jay Hardee

For Immediate Release: June 19, 2014

christopher henleyTheatre is a collaborative art form. Even though it is unusual, or, at least, not the norm, for a production to have two directors, it is, in some ways, a model that is representative of the qualities necessary for successful theatre — the balancing of distinct perspectives with a clear sense of authority (or, at least, from whom the final word will come).

Two of the most memorable Royal Shakespeare Company productions of the 1980s, which transferred with great success to New York, were co-directed by Trevor Nunn and John Caird (Les Miz and Nicholas Nickelby).

The most beguiling and endlessly fascinating aspect of theatre is that there are almost no hard and fast rules. A structure that works well in one situation may not work as well, or at all, in another.

The success of a co-directing structure is probably most likely with two people who, first of all, want to do the play; who, second of all, have ideas about how to animate the script in theatrical terms; who, third of all, are open to the ideas and impulses of a partner; and, who, fourth of all, will not be concerned about being seen as completely or unassailably in charge. (Perhaps you remember that old Ronald Reagan quote which I paraphrase, “It’s amazing what you can get done in Washington if you don’t care who is going to get the credit.”)

(left) Christopher Henley with daughter Ivona, (right) Jay Hardee with don Aksel visit Santa
(left) Christopher Henley with daughter Ivona, (right) Jay Hardee with don Aksel visit Santa

The fact that Jay and I are married and parents, of course, means that we are constantly collaborating, constantly negotiating issues of sharing authority and of being aware that there are always, for us, two perspectives that are coming from a similar point of view but which will never completely overlap.

Jay and I have worked together a lot. We have acted in plays together. We have each directed the other in plays. I have overseen, as Artistic Director of WSC, plays that Jay has directed. And, once before, with Richard III, we have directed a play together.

I remember one night when the drive home was strained; I had given a note that Jay felt was taking a scene in a totally opposite direction from what he had just worked it out to be, solving its problems. That small bit of conflict was, I see looking back, because I wasn’t sufficiently aware of what Jay was accomplishing. This kind of collaboration, therefore, necessitates a great amount of sensitivity from one partner to another.

On the flip side, though, it allows the production to avail itself of two sets of hands and two minds to work toward the most fully realized production possible. And, incidentally, that one hiccup aside, the production of Richard III is one we look back on with pride and feel was an extremely successful incidence of two directors working easily and well together and of two different perspectives illuminating a text more fully than only one would have done.

Theatre and film is replete with examples of couples who work successfully together. (One example we met when Jay and I saw the Mark Rylance in  Richard III last November: Sitting behind us were Amy Madigan and Ed Harris, a married couple who we had seen earlier in the week in the new Beth Henley play The Jacksonian.) I remember at one point noticing how many ex-couples kept working together: Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon; Rosemary Harris and Ellis Rabb; Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullmann; Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Taylor. Perhaps forging a successful working relationship can be easier than forging a successful personal relationship.

Anyway, Jay and I like working together and did so frequently before our kids were born. Our final hurrah on-stage together was at WSC in The Mistorical Hystery of Henry (I)V, in which I played Falstaff and Jay played Prince Hal. Since then, it’s been impossible for for us to work together, certainly to act together. One of us needs to be home every night with the kids. So, we’ve been kind of taking turns, one at home while the other is doing a play.

The great thing about this project is that we can rehearse it at home and, with only five performances., the commitment isn’t overwhelming and the time we need to both be away from home will be reasonable. At the same time, co-directing enables us to share the responsibilities so that neither becomes overwhelmed either with the things we need to do for the production or with the things we need to do at home and with our children. It will probably be a good while before we can work together again and both be away from home at nights for a five week run of a play.

So, Dracula: A Love Story is giving us the only chance we will have for a while to be Daddies to a cast as well as to Aksel and Ivona.

#####

What: Dracula . A Love Story
by Tim Treanor
Who: Directed By: Christopher Henley and Jay HardeeStarring: Joe Brack*, Brian Crane, Christine Hirrel, Carolyn Kashner, Lynn Sharp Spears, Josh Speerstra
Featuring: Lee Ordeman* as DraculaFull bios can be found here.*Members of Actors Equity Association
Where: Mountain – at Mount Vernon United Methodist Church
900 Massachusetts Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20001
When: Saturday, July 12: 3:45pm – 5:15pm
Friday, July 18: 10:30pm – midnight
Sunday, July 20: 6:15pm – 7:45pm
Thursday, July 24: 8:15pm – 9:45pm
Saturday, July 26: 10:45pm – 12:15am
Tickets & Passes: Go to capitalfringe.org or call 866-811-4111.
Photos: High resolution photos related to our show will be available at: https://www.timtreanorauthor.com/dracula-love-story/
Dracula .
A Love Story Publicist & Contact:
Kendra Rubinfeld, KRPR, 202-681-1151,
Kendra@KendraRubinfeldpr.com
Fringe Festival Press Contact: Laura Gross, 202-695-8223, c: 202-255-2054, press@capitalfringe.org
Official Handle and Hashtags @Count_Tepes
#draculalovestory #capfringe14


Quote about Dracula . A Love Story

Dracula. A Love Story is not just a new way of looking at an old legend. It’s a new way of looking at the legend’s values and issues in light of what we have learned since then about our passions, human psychology, and about the ambiguous nature of good and evil.”

–Tim Treanor, playwright and producer

About our Cast

Professional actors often seen on DC stages including The Kennedy Center, Studio Theater, Theater J, SCENA, Imagination Stage, Arena Stage, WSC Avant Bard and more. Two of the actors are veterans to the Capital Fringe stage, including Joe Brack, who produced and starred in last year’s Fringe hit, My Princess Bride. Full bios can be found here.

About our Playwright

This is Tim Treanor’s second play. His first, Murder in Elsinore, enjoyed a local run. Over the past nine years, Tim Treanor has reviewed over five hundred plays for the theater website DC Theatre Scene. He’s reviewed musicals for The Sondheim Review, and is now Vice-President of the American Theatre Critics Association.

About our Co-Directors

Married couple and fathers of twins, Chris Henley and Jay Hardee continue their collaboration as co-directors in this production. Christopher Henley began acting and directing around DC with Source Theatre Company in the late 1970s. He was a founding Ensemble Member at WSC Avant Bard (formerly Washington Shakespeare Company); was its Artistic Director for more than 16 years; and continues as its Artistic Director Emeritus and as a member of the Acting Company. Jay Hardee has been acting in the DC theater scene since 2005 and directing since 2008 with WSC Avant Bard, Church Street Theater and Clark Street Playhouse.

About our Company

This is the debut play for Wry Productions, an offshoot of Wry Press, which has published Tim Treanor’s political thriller, The Seduction of Braulio Jules.

About Capital Fringe

Capital Fringe is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization founded in 2005 with the purpose of connecting exploratory artists with adventurous audiences by creating outlets and spaces for creative, cutting-edge, and contemporary performance in the District. Capital Fringe’s vital programs ensure the growth and continued health of the local and regional performing arts community by helping artists become independent producers while stimulating the vibrant cultural landscape in our city.

Critic Tim Treanor makes his Capital Fringe debut as a playwright

For Immediate Release: June 14, 2014

Theater Critic Tim Treanor Steps “Into the Box” with new Dracula Play

tim on bench 1Over the past nine years, Tim Treanor has reviewed over five hundred plays for the theater website DC Theatre Scene. He’s reviewed musicals for The Sondheim Review, and is now Vice-President of the American Theatre Critics Association. Over that time, he’s said some caustic things, especially about plays in the Capital Fringe Festival.

It was time, he decided, to get “in the box” – to put his own play out there for others to judge.

The result is Dracula. A Love Story, a modern retelling of Bram Stoker’s 1897 story of a suave but monstrous killer who sucks the blood out of some people, and turns others into vampires like himself.

“It struck me that the story is as powerful now as it was in the Victorian age,” Treanor says. “People were confused and frightened by science back then, just as they are now – with climate change denyers and creationists, for example. It somehow becomes comforting to read a story about a supernatural creature.”

Fifty years ago, Treanor points out, popular writers Zane Grey, Earl Stanley Gardner, Ian Fleming – wrote about flesh-and-blood heroes. They were outsize personalities, to be sure, but they were unquestionably human. “We’ve grown a taste for the extra-human hero now,” Treanor says. “Vampires, zombies, werewolves. Fifty years ago, they were the threat. Now they’re often the heroes.”

Treanor’s Dracula, based on the savage 14th-century Romanian aristocrat, is no hero. “But I was interested in deconstructing the vampire, to see what makes him tick – or what makes him make us tick,” the playwright says.
Part of it borders on the religious. “Only two people ever said ‘drink my blood and live forever,’” Treanor points out. “One of them was Dracula.

“And there is undoubtedly a sexual frisson, particularly when he invites someone to become a vampire. The choice he gives Lucy is to surrender herself, surrender her personality, to be transported and transformed by this great creature, and to live forever.

“And that living forever part, that’s pretty cool. I mean, that’s hard to resist. And if the price is that you have to kill humans for food – well, it’s a little easier to pay after you cease being human yourself. After all, most of us don’t have any compunction about killing and eating other animals, as long as the animals aren’t cute. And that’s pretty much true for most carnivorous animals – they’re not cannibals, but they kill other types of animals without giving it a second thought. So why would a vampire be reluctant to kill a human? I tried to make that clear in the play.”

Dracula’s ability to create other vampires reminds Treanor of two things common in everyday life – lobbyists and viruses. “Dracula’s technique is to be persuasive,” Treanor says. “He doesn’t burst in and overpower anybody. He tries to convert you to his point of view, just like a lobbyist does, and when he succeeds, he changes you into himself, just like a virus will change the DNA of a good cell into itself.” In the play, Dracula takes on both aspects – he poses as a lobbyist by day (for an HMO!), and Dr. Calderone calls him a virus.

Dr. Calderone (played by Lynn Sharp Spears) is one of Treanor’s principal points of departure from Stoker’s story. “In 1897, gender roles were pretty clear: all the heroes were men, and their job was to rescue fair maidens. But that’s all nonsense now.” Treanor gave a woman the powerful job of fighting the vampire “because women do heroic things routinely, and our culture recognizes that now.”

This is Treanor’s first serious effort as a playwright (he wrote what he calls an “interactive murder mystery” for his local community theater about ten years ago – “you know, you guess the killer and get a prize, but no character arc or anything like that.”) and he calls this process “challenging and counterintuitive.

“When you write a novel (Treanor’s novel, The Seduction of Braulio Jules, is available in paperback and ebook ), or a review for that matter, you have to convey every piece of information through words. But with a play, much of the information will be conveyed through staging and acting. When I heard the first reading at Christopher and Jay’s house (co-directors Christopher Henley and Jay Hardee), I realized that I had seriously overwritten the play.” He quickly rewrote it and now has a script which, he says, “will sizzle in the hands of these actors.”

#####

What:  Dracula . A Love Story
by Tim Treanor
Who: Directed By: Christopher Henley and Jay HardeeStarring: Joe Brack*, Brian Crane, Christine Hirrel, Carolyn Kashner, Lynn Sharp Spears, Josh Speerstra
Featuring: Lee Ordeman* as DraculaFull bios can be found here.

*Members of Actors Equity Association

Where: Mountain – at Mount Vernon United Methodist Church
900 Massachusetts Ave, NW
Washington, DC   20001
When:  Saturday, July 12: 3:45pm – 5:15pm
Friday, July 18: 10:30pm – midnight
Sunday, July 20: 6:15pm – 7:45pm
Thursday, July 24: 8:15pm – 9:45pm
Saturday, July 26: 10:45pm – 12:15am
Tickets & Passes: Go to capitalfringe.org or call 866-811-4111.
Photos: High resolution photos related to our show will be available at: https://www.timtreanorauthor.com/dracula-love-story/
Dracula .
A Love Story Publicist & Contact:
Kendra Rubinfeld, KRPR, 202-681-1151,
Kendra@KendraRubinfeldpr.com
Fringe Festival Press Contact: Laura Gross, 202-695-8223, c: 202-255-2054, press@capitalfringe.org
Official Handle and Hashtags  @Count_Tepes
#draculalovestory #capfringe14


Quote about Dracula . A Love Story

Dracula. A Love Story is not just a new way of looking at an old legend. It’s a new way of looking at the legend’s values and issues in light of what we have learned since then about our passions, human psychology, and about the ambiguous nature of good and evil.”

–Tim Treanor, playwright and producer

About our Cast

Professional actors often seen on DC stages including The Kennedy Center, Studio Theater, Theater J, SCENA, Imagination Stage, Arena Stage, WSC Avant Bard and more.  Two of the actors are veterans to the Capital Fringe stage, including Joe Brack, who produced and starred in last year’s Fringe hit, My Princess Bride. Full bios can be found here.

About our Playwright

This is Tim Treanor’s second play. His first, Murder in Elsinore, enjoyed a local run. Over the past nine years, Tim Treanor has reviewed over five hundred plays for the theater website DC Theatre Scene. He’s reviewed musicals for The Sondheim Review, and is now Vice-President of the American Theatre Critics Association.

About our Co-Directors

Married couple and fathers of twins, Chris Henley and Jay Hardee continue their collaboration as co-directors in this production. Christopher Henley began acting and directing around DC with Source Theatre Company in the late 1970s. He was a founding Ensemble Member at WSC Avant Bard (formerly Washington Shakespeare Company); was its Artistic Director for more than 16 years; and continues as its Artistic Director Emeritus and as a member of the Acting Company.  Jay Hardee has been acting in the DC theater scene since 2005 and directing since 2008 with WSC Avant Bard, Church Street Theater and Clark Street Playhouse.

About our Company

This is the debut play for Wry Productions, an offshoot of Wry Press, which has published Tim Treanor’s political thriller, The Seduction of Braulio Jules.

About Capital Fringe

Capital Fringe is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization founded in 2005 with the purpose of connecting exploratory artists with adventurous audiences by creating outlets and spaces for creative, cutting-edge, and contemporary performance in the District. Capital Fringe’s vital programs ensure the growth and continued health of the local and regional performing arts community by helping artists become independent producers while stimulating the vibrant cultural landscape in our city.

 

Dracula A Love Story Press Releases

Co-Director Christopher Henley’s fascination for the Prince of Darkness

Critic Tim Treanor makes his Capital Fringe debut as a playwright

Lee Ordeman stars as Dracula in Dracula . A Love Story

Joe Brack’s visit to the site of a grisly murder helps him prepare for his role in Dracula

Christopher Henley on co-directing with spouse Jay Hardee

Brian Crane, Smithsonian archeologist, excavates his role in Dracula

Lee Ordeman stars as Dracula

For Immediate Release: June 13, 2014

From Romney to Dracula:
DC Actor Lee Ordeman Finds Himself at Home in the Most Extraordinary Characters

Two years ago, Lee Ordeman played Mitt Romney at several dates in the Washington-Baltimore area. He was a natural: Ordeman, the son of a Marine, imitated the ramrod-straight Romney effortlessly. “One of the Barack Obamas told me that I was the best Mitt he had worked with,” Ordeman said. “It sounded weird when he said it.”

lee ordeman hs for siteThis year it gets weirder still. Ordeman will be playing Vlad Tepes – Count Dracula – in the Fringe production, Dracula. A Love Story.

This is not your father’s Dracula. In this modern retelling, Tepes is a lobbyist – for an HMO! – with a terminally ill wife. He engages young Lucy Cervas (Carolyn Krasner) to read to Mina (Christine Hirrel). Lucy, bored by her life and particularly with her fiancée, (Joe Brack), finds herself fascinated by the passion which drives Vlad to love Mina, even in these extreme circumstances.

“Lucy seeks rapture,” says playwright Tim Treanor, “but she doesn’t realize that rapture can be had in ordinary events, by ordinary people.”
Ordeman is himself a somewhat extraordinary man. An athlete who is an expert in the Japanese martial art Shintaido, Ordeman spent years in Japan as a teacher, a dancer and a journalist before becoming an actor. He wrote and edited for the Japanese-language Japanese Times, and joined the studio of avant garde choreographer Kei Takei. Only when he returned to the Washington area did he consider becoming an actor.

He studied under Paul Berman, and received his MFA in Acting from Catholic University. Since then, he’s been in the Sam Rockwell-Olivia Wilde movie Better Living Through Chemistry (with Jane Fonda and Ray Liotta) and on HBO’s Game Change. He’s acted at Scena and in the web series Drakul, where he is not Dracula. And he’s been Mitt.

“I’m interested in the human aspects of my characters, no matter how unusual they are,” Ordeman says. “I like this script because I’m working with a character who is at first human – yearning and frustrated – and only afterward the ‘great and lawless vampire.’ Plus, of course, I’m working with two first-rate directors and an excellent cast.”

#####

What:

 

Dracula . A Love Story
by Tim Treanor
Who: Directed By: Christopher Henley and Jay Hardee

Starring: Joe Brack*, Brian Crane, Christine Hirrel, Carolyn Kashner, Lynn Sharp Spears, Josh Speerstra
Featuring: Lee Ordeman* as Dracula

Full bios can be found here.

*Members of Actors Equity Association

Where: Mountain – at Mount Vernon United Methodist Church
900 Massachusetts Ave, NW
Washington, DC   20001
When:

 

Saturday, July 12: 3:45pm – 5:15pm
Friday, July 18: 10:30pm – midnight
Sunday, July 20: 6:15pm – 7:45pm
Thursday, July 24: 8:15pm – 9:45pm
Saturday, July 26: 10:45pm – 12:15am
Tickets & Passes: Go to capitalfringe.org or call 866-811-4111.
Photos: High resolution photos related to our show will be available at: https://www.timtreanorauthor.com/dracula-love-story/
Dracula .
A Love Story Publicist & Contact:
Kendra Rubinfeld, KRPR, 202-681-1151,
Kendra@KendraRubinfeldpr.com
Fringe Festival Press Contact: Laura Gross, 202-695-8223, c: 202-255-2054, press@capitalfringe.org
Official Handle and Hashtags

 

@Count_Tepes
#draculalovestory #capfringe14


Quote about Dracula . A Love Story

Dracula. A Love Story is not just a new way of looking at an old legend. It’s a new way of looking at the legend’s values and issues in light of what we have learned since then about our passions, human psychology, and about the ambiguous nature of good and evil.”

–Tim Treanor, playwright and producer

About our Cast

Professional actors often seen on DC stages including The Kennedy Center, Studio Theater, Theater J, SCENA, Imagination Stage, Arena Stage, WSC Avant Bard and more.  Two of the actors are veterans to the Capital Fringe stage, including Joe Brack, who produced and starred in last year’s Fringe hit, My Princess Bride. Full bios can be found here.

About our Playwright

This is Tim Treanor’s second play. His first, Murder in Elsinore, enjoyed a local run. Over the past nine years, Tim Treanor has reviewed over five hundred plays for the theater website DC Theatre Scene. He’s reviewed musicals for The Sondheim Review, and is now Vice-President of the American Theatre Critics Association.

About our Co-Directors

Married couple and fathers of twins, Chris Henley and Jay Hardee continue their collaboration as co-directors in this production. Christopher Henley began acting and directing around DC with Source Theatre Company in the late 1970s. He was a founding Ensemble Member at WSC Avant Bard (formerly Washington Shakespeare Company); was its Artistic Director for more than 16 years; and continues as its Artistic Director Emeritus and as a member of the Acting Company.  Jay Hardee has been acting in the DC theater scene since 2005 and directing since 2008 with WSC Avant Bard, Church Street Theater and Clark Street Playhouse.

About our Company

This is the debut play for Wry Productions, an offshoot of Wry Press, which has published Tim Treanor’s political thriller, The Seduction of Braulio Jules.

About Capital Fringe

Capital Fringe is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization founded in 2005 with the purpose of connecting exploratory artists with adventurous audiences by creating outlets and spaces for creative, cutting-edge, and contemporary performance in the District. Capital Fringe’s vital programs ensure the growth and continued health of the local and regional performing arts community by helping artists become independent producers while stimulating the vibrant cultural landscape in our city.