'I wanted to run away with Dracula'

From the Oakland Tribune:

EDNA O'BRIEN is a superstitious Irishwoman. During a recent conversation she "touches wood" multiple times, usually when she's talking about the opening of her play "Family Butchers" at San Francisco's Magic Theatre. She also touches wood to avoid cursing her new novel, "Twilight," when she happens to mention it in passing. If superstition has helped O'Brien in her 45-year literary career, perhaps we should all be knocking wood. Since her earliest splash, when her "Country Girls Trilogy" was banned in Ireland in the early'60s, O'Brien has become a book world celebrity almost as famous for her auburn hair and striking beauty as for her books that deal primarily with women, family turmoil and Ireland. snip "There weren't many books and not much of what we'd call 'culture' in the town," she recalls. "So when these players would come with their melodramas, I can't tell you how exciting it was just to see one of their fliers stuck to a stone fence. Then to watch those actors. Oh! It seemed they led such charmed lives, which I'm sure now they didn't." A production that remains vivid in O'Brien's memory is "Dracula." "I wanted to run away with Dracula," she says. "I was so daft."

So for all you amateur actors performing Dracula this October - and from my searches through the Internet I know there's a lot of you out there - don't think your production is unimportant just because you're in a small-town. You might be inspiring audience members in incredible ways.