Lee Pulaski lpulaski@wolfrivermedia.com
Leader Photo by Lee Pulaski Victor Frankenstein, played by Hunter Hokenstad, looks on in amazement as his creature, played by Hunter Krolow, comes alive in a scene from “Frankenstein.” The show opens its three-night run on Thursday.
The dates of the Shawano Community High School fall play coinciding with Halloween weekend gave the school’s theater program a variety of options for a frightening and terrifying show.
The ultimate choice was “Frankenstein,” the classic tale written by Mary Shelley but adapted by Austin Tichenor for the stage. “Frankenstein” comes to life Thursday at the SCHS auditorium and runs through next Saturday.
Alex Konen, director, said he picked Tichenor’s version of Shelley’s tale of a man who creates life in order to stave off death because the script was the closest to what Shelley wrote nearly 200 years ago.
“The challenge, for me, was finding the right script, because there are so many adaptations,” Konen said. “I think I read five different copies, and with two of them, I got through 10 pages and said, ‘No, not the right script for me.’”
“Frankenstein,” also known in earlier versions as the tale of “The Modern Prometheus,” tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a man who creates another man through metaphysical means. He does this after the sudden death of his father, who ends up brain dead from a freak accident. Victor shoves away his grief by immersing himself in experiments, hoping to replicate the spark of life in all beings, which eventually lead to him combining various body parts into a humanoid.
Konen said Tichenor’s adaptation of “Frankenstein” eliminated what he thought were the boring parts of the book, specifically where characters are just sitting and talking. Instead, the script shows everything that is happening.
“I really like the story. I like the questions it raises,” Konen said. “It is meant to be a scary story in that who are we as man to do the things that we do sometimes.”
Konen also liked how the script he chose does not follow the original Hollywood version in the 1930s, where Frankenstein’s creature had bolts in his neck. He noted the creature is not just a monster going on a rampage, that the story goes deeper.
The news of “Frankenstein” being Shawano’s fall production garnered quite a bit of attention by the students. Konen had offered copies of the script for checkout prior to auditions, and he said everyone who checked out a script came in to try for a part.
The challenge for Konen with selecting cast members was the majority of speaking parts being male. With 10 of the 16 parts geared toward men, Konen made one of Victor’s brothers a sister in order to fill the cast.
“I did have a large number of guys try out, which was good,” Konen said.
The show also gives the school the chance to use its image projectors to allow multiple scenes on the single stage. Although there are rooted areas for scenes in the Frankenstein family home and the loft by Victor and his best friend, Henry, there are a number of other vignettes, like the street where Henry encounters Victor sneaking around with a concealed body part.
“I really like the look it can give,” Konen said. “I want to paint a picture of them being in a particular location without having that actual location because we don’t have enough storage space to create every single location.”