Saturday, October 20, 2007

Florida Today Article on Bathory!

'Blood Countess' stalks Orlando theater (Pam Harbaugh)

One of the most prolific theater artists in Orlando is John DiDonna, founder of Empty Space Theatre Co. With a real passion for intelligent theater that is well done, DiDonna is on a constant search for unusual work that is both provocative and imbued with literary merit. When he doesn't find it, he writes his own.

Enter "Bathory: The Blood Countess," written and directed by DiDonna. One of Bathory's three faces is Peg O'Keef, also a very well-known theater artist in Orlando .

The caveat here, other than frightening scenes, is about the adult themes, violence and partial nudity. The caveat sounds apt. Reading a little bit about the title character, it seems she went mad from a massive slaughter of women.

We told you he liked the provocative.

The production opens at 8:30 tonight and runs through Nov. 3 at the Lowndes Shakespeare Center , 812 E. Rollins St. , Orlando . Tickets are $20 general, $15 for students and seniors. Cash only at the door. Call 407-328-9005 or visit www.
emptyspacestheatre.org.

If that's too much for you, try the Empty Spaces' "Festival of the Works of Samuel Beckett," which launches in April. If you want to be involved in that festival, e-mail jdidonna@bellsouth.net .

http://www.flatoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071019/COLUMNISTS0105/710190308/1046/life

Friday, October 19, 2007

Bathory Article - Orlando Sentinel

Welcome to the first article on Bathory, we also had a spot on WMFE last night!  This article appears in the Friday, Oct 19th Calendar with a great photo as well.

Human horror: The real-life story of Countess Elizabeth Bathory
Rebecca Swain | Special to the Sentinel October 19, 2007

Inside an ordinary-looking garage, in an ordinary-looking neighborhood, a strange and unusual ritual is taking place.

Four women crowd together, chanting an old spell for protection, softly at first, then their voices rising and coalescing into a violent crash of words. Screams of terror join their chorus until the chaotic tumble ends abruptly in expectant silence.

It is a terrifying thing to witness, something that makes one feel lucky to make it through alive, half-surprised that a pit of hell has not opened up.

Heaven only knows what the neighbors think.

Then again, this sort of visceral response is what Empty Spaces Theatre Co. is hoping to provoke with its new production, Bathory: The Blood Countess, which opens today. Written and directed by John DiDonna, the new show is based on the life of Hungarian Countess Elizabeth Bathory, who, in 1611, was tried and convicted of killing more than 600 young women.

"I always knew I wanted to tell the real story," DiDonna says. "I was about 8 years old when I read a book called In Search of Dracula and it had a chapter on Elizabeth Bathory. I was fascinated with this story."

Bathory's reputation for cruelly and violently torturing the girls -- many of whom were servants in her castle -- made her an almost instant legend. Rumors and half-truths began circulating long before authorities discovered the truth behind the imposing walls of Castle Cachtice. The countess was lesbian, an epileptic, a witch who bathed in the blood of virgins, a madwoman, a cruel master.

And time has done little to establish any kind of truth.

Eight years ago, DiDonna sat down and wrote two pages of raw dialogue that would become Bathory, but he set the project aside. He wouldn't return to it until he met the three women who would play the Countess.

"I always knew I wanted to have three ..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /> Elizabeths ," he says. He took the thread of the narrative and intertwined it through three stages of Bathory's life.

Samantha O'Hare, Nikki Darden and Peg O'Keefe play the countess at different ages; one as the young woman who suffers epileptic fits and rebels against an overbearing stepmother; one as the countess in her prime, a vicious gleam in her eyes as she inflicts terror upon the servant girls under her control; and one as the countess in her later years, stripped of what power she had but no less intimidating. During rehearsal at DiDonna's home one evening, their voices and personalities slip between one another, like a spirit possessing each woman in turn.

"I started talking to Peg years ago [about the role]. When I met Nikki, I knew I had the middle Elizabeth . Then I met Samantha about a year ago, and I was ready to write the play."

The script comes from court documents and historical records, rendering the dialogue in a fashion that is almost literary nonfiction. DiDonna and his longtime producing partner Seth Kubersky then shaped the look and feel of the production with sparsely gothic overtones, in keeping with the Empty Spaces Co. visual aesthetic.

"The psychological floor plan is a raised horseshoe where the outside characters begin," Kubersky says. "The pit in the middle is Elizabeth 's domain" -- a place of torment, fire and death.

Perhaps the biggest challenge for the cast and the production is striking a balance between celebrating and vilifying the historical character of Elizabeth Bathory.

"We're not trying to excuse her. We're trying to explain why she's become this thing," DiDonna says.

Kubersky picks on that thought and carries it along. "She's ultimately a question mark," he says, "The play focuses on the people around her, always asking 'why?' "

Her story is one of questions, no real answers, they say. Was Elizabeth Bathory a murderer and madwoman, or an innocent railroaded by politics of the time? It's a twisted sort of fairy tale, in which power and beauty are the enemies, and a woman with too much of both is demonized into something perhaps more manageable.

Rebecca Swain is an Orlando freelance writer.