Draculo: A Telenovela

Draculo: A Telenovela

Three episodes written by Junot Díaz
Music composed by Miguel Zenón
Concept + direction by Daniel Irizarry

This multidisciplinary, collaborative theater production course centers the creation of a live, episodic telenovela for the stage! Reimagining Bram Stoker’s Dracula through a Caribbean and postcolonial lens, our brand new Draculo: A Telenovela will transport us from Romania in 1897 across the Atlantic Ocean to the Dominican Republic.

Draculo: A Telenovela brings together vampire mythology, migration, family, colonial history, memory, and desire. Students will participate in a devised rehearsal process by creating live commercials, musical sequences, and dumbshows alongside the scripted episodes, and explore the theatrical language of Puerto Rico’s rich telenovela tradition. Set on a pataphysical television soundstage spanning 1955–1990, each one-hour performance transforms the theater into a shared space where actors, musicians, and audiences make the story together. Through performance, design, music, movement, and collaborative experimentation, the course investigates how television conventions can be translated into live theater—and how theatrical storytelling can become a vessel for Caribbean and global memory.