Dracula

121 years after it first sent chills throughout the world Quintessence Theatre bring Stoker’s horrific masterpiece vividly back to life in their own innovative, unsettling and physically sensuous adaptation.

In the echoing confines of a Victorian mental asylum an incarcerated man struggles to convince a watching gaggle of doctors of the extraordinary truth of an immortal shape-shifter – more monster than man – who lives through the consumption of human blood. As he desperately strives to piece his fragmented mind and rememberings together and make sense of the unthinkable horrors that befell him and his missing comrades, he comes to realise that he is fighting not just for his sanity, but his very living soul…

Stylised and expressionistic in both performance and design and with a multi-rolling ensemble cast of five, Quintessence use their unique dazzling physical ensemble theatre techniques to breathe new life into old horror, and provide a slick visual feast and haunting atmosphere that Stoker himself would envy.

First performed in 2017 (nearly 120 years to the very day since it was published) at An Táin Arts Centre, Dundalk, this anniversary production transferred to Droichead Arts Centre to headline the Drogheda Arts Festival 2017.