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The Vampyre by Tim Kelly
About the Play
Aubrey Harwood is an impressionable young gentleman who lives with his formidable aunt, his sister and her equally naive friend. When he sets off to travel the world with the myterious Lord Ruthven he leaves behind his friends, family and good friend Durward.
Aubrey returns from his trip a changed and broken man. A once peaceful country house has become a place for drugs and gambling, and we meet a fierce Greek who is far from home. What really happened abroad? Can Aubrey save his friends from the same fate? Will anyone escape?
The Vampyre is a tale of thrills, mystery and terror which inspired Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
About the Author
Never heard of him? If you are an average person just interested in literature, that’s not embarrassing at all. Tim Kelly has never received a Tony award or similar recognition, though he was far from being a non-entity.
Surprisingly enough, we have found that he was the most prolific American playwright of the 20th century, leaving us the really impressive number of far over 350 (!) plays. During his lifetime, most of them were in print simultaneously, and some of the most popular were of course translated into other languages and are still being performed world-wide.
Born in 1937 in Saugus, Massachusetts, he studied at Emerson College (B.A.) and at Yale University (M.A.). Kelly is known to have started publishing at the tender age of 14. His first play to be published was Widow’s Walk, in the 1960s and at the same time some of his others were already being produced in New York. He briefly worked as a theatre critic in Phoenix, Arizona, and then as a television writer („Here Come the Brides“, „Black Street Fighter“) from 1968-1978. Very little is known about his private life. On December 7, 1998, Tim Kelly died suddenly of a brain hemorrhage (age 61) in his Hollywood home.
Kelly received countless honors for his playwriting including seven major university awards, grants from the Office of advanced Drama Research, the National Endowment for the arts, the American Broadcasting Company and the Nederlander Production Company. a Tim Kelly Collection has been established at the University of Wyoming’s American Heritage Center and Emerson College has twice honored him for his „Contributions to the Field of playwriting.
He wrote under his own name, and also at least four pseudonyms: Vera Morris, J. Moriarty, Robert Swift, Keith Jackson.
Kelly was noted for the broad scope of his work which covered everything from mysteries to musicals to serious drama, and he particularly enjoyed writing for young audiences. In 1995, Tim Kelly was elected a member of The College of Fellows of the American Theatre.
Kelly himself said about his work:“My plays fall into three categories; adaptation; works I do under commission; and wholly personal, creative efforts, which are always the toughest to promote. Where do I get my ideas? Nowhere. Everywhere. What we need are not so many young playwrights–they’re all over the place–but some young producers. Old ones, too. Essentially, I’m a storyteller. To a certain extent, I suppose, I do favor plot over character. What advice would I give to the aspiring playwright? Don’t let anyone put you or your play down. If you don’t believe in your play, no one else will. And remember–there are no creative absolutes. Don’t let anyone tell you differently.“
His plays cover almost any subject matter you can imagine, often drawing on well-known subjects. „He would write plays that would spoof something that was already well known, filling a huge gap for the amateur market unable to produce plays like Cats or Phantom of the Opera,“ said Mike Vigilant, the musical collaborator on Phantom of the Op’ry. Consequently many of Kelly’s plays were adapted into popular musicals that were easier to stage than Broadway shows by their publishers.
Tim Kelly comes across as a workaholic, working from his secluded Hollywood home: „Writing is an obsession and a compulsion. I feel secure and comfortable when I’m writing and perhaps less so when I’m not.“ He often did not meet his collaborators; the scripts were simply turned over to songwriters. Kelly preferred to send his drafts by mail from California, inserting a cryptic instruction like „jitterbug“ or „mambo“ for Francoeur (one of the collaborators) to follow. At that, Francoeur would write something, record it on his synthesizer and send it back to Kelly. There were no complaints. „I’m not even sure I want to meet him,“ Francoeur said of Kelly. „There’s kind of a mystique I like. Tim Kelly is this man over the rainbow somewhere. I send him my songs, and he likes them.“
A publisher once explained: „Tim never really cared about Broadway at all. He was very much dedicated to educational theatre, plays where you would have 30 parts. Tim wrote with the formula that nobody else has been able to get a hold of: Simple set, fun parts, roles for everybody.”
Even though we were not looking for thirty parts, Tim Kelly’s oeuvre is certainly one that also meets TED’s needs.
The Vanpyre was performed on the following dates:
- Monday, February 2nd, 2015, 8 p.m.
- Tuesday, February 10th, 2015, 8 p.m.
- Wednesday, February 11th 2015, 8 p.m
The Cast (in order of speaking)
| Melissa, ward of Lady Harwood | HannahSchabio |
| Lydia, Aubrey’s sister |
Nike Larrá |
| Lady Harwood, Aubrey’s aunt | Anna Weinand |
| Mrs Kent, housekeeper | Karen Blunt |
| Aubrey Harwood, young gentleman | David Kinkopf |
| Lord Ruthven, a mysterious poet | Adam Pardoe |
| Bones, stableman | Nobuyuki Kobayashi |
| Durward Lennox, Aubrey’s friend, medical student | Mathias Zimmer |
| Artemas Corso, unexpected visitor from Greece | Adrian Kuhn |
| Tess, serving girl | Helena Wagner |
| Constance Holstein, family friend | Vanessa Klein |
| Roger Holstein | Georg Wiszniewsky |