It’s alive!
This October, actor Jason Stevens will be regaling audiences with a live rendition of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein at Craigdarroch Castle. Stevens has gained a reputation for his performance of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol for the past 10 years, and he’s excited to be telling a different sort of story as frigid fog rolls across moonlit moors.
“It’s a great story; it’s not what people think it is,” says Stevens. “The ‘raging monster’ is actually the sympathetic character—it’s Dr. Frankenstein who comes off as being more monstrous in his behaviour: he creates something and he takes no responsibility for it. He’s the ultimate deadbeat dad.”
Stevens believes the story is about human accountability, that acting without due consideration is dangerous.
“You have a well-intentioned scientist who is eager to expand human understanding without thinking through the consequences, which results in destruction and murder and death. There’s so much going on there,” he says. “Everything from the Manhattan Project to modern human technology has consequences. Be aware of what you create. Just because we have the technology to do something doesn’t necessarily mean we should go ahead and do it.”
Stevens also thinks the story touches upon the effect of neglect upon the human psyche, how instances of violence and psychopathy increase when children grow up without proper love and support.
“Monsters are made—that’s really the underlying message. There’s a lot of people who don’t take responsibility for their own children. You’re multiple times more likely to go to prison, get addicted to drugs, have unintended pregnancies and things like that, and the prisons are filled with failed cases of people who have been neglected by their creators,” says Stevens. “I think the parallels are huge. I mean, the monster doesn’t even have a name—the most fundamental human dignity is not afforded to him. He’s also hideously ugly and repulsive to humankind, so he has no place. No one has spared a thought for his dignity and human rights.”
Adapting a full-length novel to an hour-long solo piece is an exercise of editorial mercilessness, according to Stevens, but if done right, it still retains the essential components of the original story.
“You have to be pretty much ruthless in cutting it; you have to basically leave out every single thing you can, and only leave enough in to get the feel and flavour of the story,” he says. “Last year when I did this, two people in the audience had just finished reading the original version of the story, and they said I captured it for them—even though it was heavily abridged, it still had the right feel.”
Stevens brings 10 characters to life within the performance, and he relies on various methods of acting to make them distinct to his audience.
“I use different voices for the various characters; they each have their own flavour,” he says. “If you look up and to the right as one character, then you look down and to the left as another. Each character has a different tempo, like music, so people will be able to follow that.”
He believes that the power of spoken word connects with audiences on a visceral level unlike anything else.
“I do think that storytelling is a primal art form, it’s what makes us human. We tell stories to each other; we’re the only animal that can,” he says. “We’re so used to digital media, we’re so used to being fed our stories via screens, to have something personal is generally well-received. And it’s deliberately stripped down. I don’t have any set, I don’t have any props, I don’t have any costumes, I don’t have anything. I just rely on the spoken word, and in that 19th-century location [of the castle], there’s something ancient about it that people really react positively to.”
Frankenstein
6 pm October 9, 16, 23, 30
$30, Craigdarroch Castle
thecastle.ca