Denver Center for the Performing Arts Line Producer, Jessi Eckenrod, recently facilitated a panel discussion with members of Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors. The fast-paced comedy, produced by DCPA Cabaret, features five actors playing multiple characters, which requires numerous quick changes throughout the show. Jessi interviewed Assistant Stage Manager Kaden Dolph, Costume Coordinator Meghan Anderson Doyle, and actress Leslie O’Carroll who plays Dr. Westfeldt, Renfield, Captain, Man-Eating Wolf, and others.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

JESSI ECKENROD: Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors is a very fast, fast, fast, 90-minute show with only five actors portraying several different characters. It makes sense that there might be quite a few quick changes, many of them around 15 seconds or less. Leslie, what are you thinking when you’re going into those quick changes?

LESLIE O’CARROLL: What’s my next line? Am I going to make it? No…

There’s really no time to think. When I jump out the window, I’m thinking, “Do I have enough breath?” [before I launch into a very long “Ohhhhh” as I exit the stage and reenter as another character].

JESSI: Kaden, what about you?

KADEN DOLPH: I hope the magnets help and work with us today, which they always do, but there’s always that moment where you’re like, “Today could be the time when they don’t, and then what am I going to do?”

JESSI: Meghan what classifies a costume change as a quick change?

MEGHAN ANDERSON DOYLE: A quick change is usually under three minutes. Sometimes, they can be 5 to 10 seconds, other times up to 3 minutes. It just depends on how intricate the costume is, how much rigging work we have to do, and [the amount of] choreography between the actor and the dresser and the costume itself.

JESSI: Kaden, before you came to Denver, you were on The Book of Mormon tour. Were the quick changes in that show as intense as they are in Dracula?

KADEN: Yes, but in a different way. In The Book of Mormon, most of the quick changes are ensemble. The whole ensemble is normally changing at once, which can be a lot because there are 20 or more people trying to do quick changes. But the difference I found with Mormon is since the whole ensemble’s changing, nothing on stage is necessarily waiting for their line to move the story forward. There’s a number — “Spooky Mormon Hell Dream” — where everybody’s changing into devils and skeletons. It’s very chaotic backstage, but we have planned late entrances for all of those dancers so it can keep moving forward.

What we found with Dracula is that everything is so reliant on one person making the change to move the story forward. So, if something were to go wrong, it would be a show hold just because there is nothing to necessarily keep going with. Every change has a lot of anxiety with it because you really have to make it, and you don’t want to be the reason we stopped, which we have not had happen and is really, really awesome so far.

JESSI: So that’s why everyone’s always cheering backstage whenever a quick change goes through!

Leslie, your track in Dracula has some of the most extreme changes. Can you share a bit of your journey from rehearsal to performance?

LESLIE: The hardest one is going out the window and changing from Renfield back to Dr. Westfeldt. I had a lot of anxiety about that because in the UK version, the actress jumps out the window and runs all the way around the stage and then comes in the other side. So, in rehearsal, that’s what we were trying to do. When Gordon [Greenberg, Director] came, he said, “Why are you running all the way around like that?” And I said, “Because that’s what [the original actress] did.” He replied, “There’s a door right there. Just go over there.” I was like, “What?!? Ok. That’s a great idea!”

Gordon gave us another tip. Originally, we were stripping off the Renfield costume, putting on Dr. Westfeldt’s coat, and coming in. He said, “Why don’t you just wear it underneath?” So, Meghan made it work. I don’t know how she and her team did it. They took in the coat so that it would fit underneath. Before,if anything went wrong, I had no breathing room. And with Gordon’s tip, it’s easier. Now, I have two seconds if something goes wrong, but we still have time.

Also…I’m a panicker. That’s me. I’m a panicker. I tend to move around a lot when I shouldn’t. Amber [Krimbel, DCPA Dresser] told me, “You have to stop and let us do the work.” And what I learned (and I’m getting better at it) is to just stop. They do their thing and then I move on. I had to take myself out of the equation so that they could make it work. And Meghan has worked with me many times, and said the very same thing only like, “We’re going to work this out together,” meaning I’ll figure it out and you should step away. That actually has been the best thing because they are so good. Now, I don’t have to worry and all I have to concentrate on is to hold my breath for that long “Ohhhh…..” That’s all I have to concentrate on. And then get the laugh.

JESSI: And she gets the biggest laugh of the show. Every single performance.

LESLIE: Oh, I wait for it. We’re so fast now. I look [at the audience as if to say], “That was fast. You better clap.” And they do!

JESSI: Meghan, what methods of rigging are used throughout the show for fast closures?

MEGHAN: I would say each garment has its own set of secrets. We use everything from Velcro to snaps to zippers, magnets, underdressing, overdressing. Some of the garments have all of those things and get worn on top of or underneath something else. So, each change has its own specific needs and layering. We do rehearsals and talk to the staff and to the actor, and we make it happen in the show.

JESSI: How you do determine what method you use. Is it dependent on how fast the change is or the type of material you’re working with?

MEGHAN: All of the above. We try not to use Velcro on a change that happens on stage because it’s the noise that everybody knows. You want to use a zipper in an appropriate place. Magnets probably shouldn’t get used next to metal scenery, you know? You just have to think through all of the things — what it needs to do, what it’s going to be around, and how it needs to happen.

JESSI: Kaden, you’re the Assistant Stage Manager, but you’re also responsible for setting up the flow of backstage traffic. How do you keep things running smoothly and safely with a tight space backstage?

KADEN: The walls are very, very tight. The distance from what appears on stage to the backstage area is just a mere few feet. What helped us in rehearsal is we took the measurements of the actual walls in the theatre and put those on the floor in the room so that we could think about [the space]. Once we moved into the theatre, it was another trial and error to figure out what needed to happen all at once and where we could put all of those things. Sometimes that involved switching a quick change to a different side of the stage because there was too much going on in the same two feet and it just wasn’t going to work. We would move somebody to the other side or we had to move the backstage Tetris of our coffin, our light wall, and some of the scenic elements.

JESSI: You work alongside two stagehands. Can you talk about the type of prep that went into getting ready for such a fast show?

KADEN: Our two stagehands are really, really, really good, which is lucky. In the rehearsal room, it was just me, so I was doing the full backstage track by myself. When it came time [for the stagehands to join], I spent a lot of hours trying to figure out the run sheet, which is just a big sheet that says everything that’s going on at once. It was a lot of me pretending to be one of the stagehands in my head thinking, “Could I make it by this time to move to that side to be able to grab those things or not?” It was a lot of mental strength first.

Then we had them in the room. They came to two run throughs at the very, very end of the rehearsal process before we moved into the theatre. I think one of the first things I said to them was, “This show is incredibly fast, and you just have to figure it out. It’s really crazy.” I handed them a detailed sheet and said, “This is what we’re going to do and please let me know if there are things that we need to monitor and adjust because we absolutely can.”

JESSI: Leslie, what about you having to do eight shows a week, sometimes ten? How do you prep for such a high energy show week after week after week?

LESLIE: The great thing about the show is that we kind of look at it like a train. When you get on the train, you don’t get off the train until it’s over. You also have all your other castmates there to help you. I’ve never worked on a show where the audience really plays a huge factor in how the show runs. I’ve done comedies before, but this is a different type of comedy. You have to engage the audience from the very beginning because they help propel you through what you’re doing. I would say it’s the hardest when you have an audience that doesn’t understand what’s happening. They’re like, “What is this?” We’ve had those audiences. When that happens, we rely on each other very heavily to be like, “OK. You pick up this. OK, you’re going to do that.” That is very helpful…audience participation and working with everyone on the show.

For me personally, I always used to complain about Christmas Carol 10 shows a week (recounting her 25-year stint in the Denver Center Theatre Company’s annual production). That was really tough. I didn’t do anything at Christmas. I never put up decorations. I never did anything because my prep was to go home and sleep. Now with this show, I’ll be doing that for six months…. No, it’s really great! You really do have to rest. We all steam our voices. We hydrate, hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. That’s something we definitely have to do for this show because you’re sweating so much, you might be wearing three costumes at once. We all do that. We have special pee breaks where it’s me and Zach [Kononov, actor] at one time where we can go pee. We come off stage, and we’re like, “Pee, right? Go!” That’s the only time you have.

But it’s a super fun show, and I hope you will all come out and see it!