XANDER HOUGH

From about the age of 13 having been exposed to only a few works of musical theatre, I decided it was something that I wanted to create myself. Since then I have voraciously got my hands on any and every musical I can think of and this only went to increase my determination to actually write one myself. Noticing that the most successful and exciting works were often adaptations of period novels, I set about look for original material.

The inspiration for this musical project came from me reading Bram Stoker's novel when I was about 16 years old. I was looking for a subject to write a musical about as I'd decided that I'd give it a go. I thought that this was an un-mined resource as far as theatre had been concerned. Dracula seemed to have seen many screen incarnations but few stage ones until recently. I set about sketching ideas for the show and had a strong idea of the types of songs I wanted to write and how they fitted into the structure of the novel.

I had originally thought of going alone and writing the book for the show as well, but I soon found that it was far too difficult and my writing lacked structure. I came across Grace Pritchard on the internet of all places, and was impressed with her work that she had done during her time at Williams University in the United States. Over a period of about a year, Grace and I worked through what I had already done as well as doing some drastic restructuring. She added her own magic to songs I had already written, but also provided inspiration for some of the best work in the show. It was Grace who provided the direction for the piece.

Many academics have discussed the sexual side of the novel and while it is there and very attractive, I find the novel much more sinister and powerful in it's gothic horror rather than an exploration of human sexuality. Grace opened my mind to the intrinsic battle of good and evil being enhanced by the advancing 20th century scientific approach versus the mythical and superstitious world of Count Dracula.

This provided me with a way to create a development in the score. Before the show had been a collection of songs orchestrated in a way which lurched from rock opera to very lush musical theatre. This resulted in a mish-mash of techniques and styles which simply did not work. However, the clash or orchestrations and styles seemed to provide a connection with the central theme of the story and returned to my original score. I noticed that I had often used a certain style for moments that involved the living, and different styles and orchestrations for moments which involved the undead. A complete overhaul of the score ensued and the score in its present for charts the battle between science and nature in the new 2004 version. To further bring cohesiveness and make sure this theme was evident in the score many of the major songs were re-written and re-orchestrated to form the latest DRACULA which hopefully is more powerful than ever.