written by

Conor McPherson

starring

Craig Alexander

Director

Shelly Higgs

music/Sound

Den Hanrahan

Production design

Imogen Keen

Lighting design

James Tighe

videography

Creswick Collective - Liam Budge

vision switch

Kyle Sheedy

Dialect coach

Christopher Samuel Carroll

Produced with The Street Theatre
thestreet.org.au

Supported by the ACT Government

An eccentric, teasing yarn of a play from the multi-award winning author of The Weir.

"When I was a boy, I was afraid of the dark... What was there. And maybe one of the things I thought was there was vampires."

When a jaded Dublin theatre critic (Alexander) abandons his ordinary life in pursuit of a beautiful young actress, his desires lead him to strike an irreversible bargain with a band of modern-day vampires.

Is it all a drunken lie? A tantalizing fairy tale? His own version of a higher truth? Or an endless confession amidst a self-imposed purgatory?

McPherson’s chilling and spellbinding vampire tale is performed by award-winning actor, Craig Alexander (Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol, Venus in Fur) who shares the stage with the inimitable singer/songwriter, guitar, banjo and harp player, stomp-box stomper, and storyteller, Den Hanrahan (Den Hanrahan and The Rum Runners).

The premiere performance was streamed live from the intimate confines of Street Two, in a unique theatrical/cinematic hybrid driven by the Covid19 pandemic. With almost 1500 views throughout it’s brief season the team are looking forward to bringing it back and sharing it with live audiences throughout the nation.

Conor mcpherson | playwright

Conor McPherson is a playwright and screenwriter who was named by The New York Times as ‘the finest playwright of his generation'. Conor won the George Devine Award in 1997 with his play St Nicholas, and went on to win an Olivier Award for Best New Play in 1999 with his follow-up, The Weir. In 2006 he received a Tony Award nomination for Shining City and an Olivier Award nomination for Best New Play for The Seafarer. In 2011 he wrote and directed The Veil for the National Theatre and in 2012 he adapted Strindberg's The Dance of Death for the Donmar Trafalgar Season. The Night Alive premièred at the Donmar in June 2013 and transferred to the Atlantic Theater in New York in November 2013.

craig alexander | performer

Craig Alexander is an award-winning actor, writer, film and theatre maker with a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Acting from CSU. He has an extensive history touring throughout regional centres with Riverina based Gearstick Theatre; the company which he co-founded and led as Artistic Director for almost ten years. As well as producing over 25 different productions, Gearstick allowed Craig to hone his character skills with a variety of roles including Bernie Litko in David Mamet's Sexual Perversity in Chicago, Dracula himself in Kevin Poynter's adaptation of Bram Stoker's Gothic classic and even Pat the Dog in Bruce Keller's gorgeous children's play Puppy Love. Following the birth of his second child he took some time off performing and creating and found himself in various creative leadership positions across the country, including Creative Producer for Jigsaw Theatre Company, General Manager for Canberra Youth Theatre and Manager for Coffs Harbour's gorgeous Jetty Memorial Theatre. However, since 2014 Craig has once again been focused on his own creative practice, primarily as an actor and writer. Recent stage credits include: two successful seasons of his acclaimed solo production of Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol; Roo Webber in Pigeonhole Theatre’s lauded production of Summer of the Seventeenth Doll; Thomas Novachek in The Street Theatre’s Venus In Fur and the premiere of David Atfield’s Exclusion.Craig's also a father of four, a motorcycle enthusiast, gamer, somewhat-regular meditator, progressive callisthenics practitioner, Wing Chun Kung Fu student, not very successful organic vegetable grower, often house-husband, Connoisseur vanilla ice-cream addict and occasionally finds time to sleep...

Shelly Higgs | Director

Shelly Higgs is a theatre director, dramaturg, producer, sometimes co-playwright, multi award-winning photographer and a mum of four spirited kids.

Shelly trained as an actor (BA Acting CSU 2002), (RADA 2004) and co-founded regional theatre company Gearstick Theatre with Craig Alexander in 2002.

With Gearstick, Shelly spent a decade producing dozens of shows, touring them regionally and to major metropolitan centres within Australia, playing Fringe Festival circuits and creating theatre in education performances for schools within the Riverina.

In the past Shelly’s directing has primarily focused on plays produced and toured within a regional context and productions within the Independent Theatre Sector. Recent credits include plays created within the ACT: Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol (The Street Theatre, Depot Theatre) and And Then There Were 3 (The Street Theatre), 7 Great Inventions of the Modern Industrial Age (The Street Theatre) and most recently Epitaph by Ross Mueller (Currently playing at the Australian National War Memorial) and Fragments by Maura Pierlot (The Street Theatre, 2019).

Shelly is currently project co-ordinator for The Street’s First Seen (New Works-in-Progress Season) and has worked on a number of creative developments for The Street as both director and dramaturg, including; The Refuge by Geraldine Turner, Marion and Walter by Peter Coleman, Life’s a Bitch and Irene’s Wish by David Cole, Diode Yang by Graham McBean, Breaking the Castle by Peter Cook and Clean by David Atfield.

Above all, Shelly is a storyteller; and in line with her work as a professional photographer, her theatre work is grounded with a strong visual aesthetic and a search for authenticity.