Well THIS sounds interesting…reasonably local theatre guy Jared McDaris is working on a play about Countess Bathory. Known as the Blood Countess, she was a member of the Hungarian aristocracy. And she was sadistic.
Normally I wouldn't mention anything about something that someone was TALKING about doing. But I always liked reading about Bathory, so I'm excited enough about this one to mention it even if it might never get produced. Bathory tortured people--evidently for the fun of it. At least--that's what the legends say. Bathory was born into one of the more powerful Protestant families in Hungary. She is said to have taken great delight in trotting secant girls in the most grizzly ways imaginable. FO course, history has a way of looking for monsters and making demons out of them . . . so her crimes might have been exaggerated or abdicated altogether. McDaris is using the historical figure as the subject of what is evidently his fourth Verse play. The play The Life And Death of Countess Bathory is an "Elizabethan-Style History Play." So it's assuming that all of the allegations are true, which sounds like a really interesting starting point. Who needs Dracula when you've got something altogether more sinister?
On Facebook, McDaris lists his home as Chicago. There's an informal staged reading of the play coming up here in Milwaukee--tonight, actually. At the Alchemist Theatre. (Looks kind of like it's an invite-only thing.) It'd be really interesting to see how just such a thing could be staged. It'd be really cool to see it staged here.
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