Vampires, cowboys and communists make for pretty strange company, but student director Michael Mentz thinks they make for cutting-edge theater too.
Mentz and his crew will present their adaptation of “Vampire Cowboy Trilogy” this week in the Studio Theatre in the Music and Dramatic Arts Building. The crew’s hope is that their campy and comical play will attract unlikely audiences to the art of drama.
“I wanted to do something new, something that wasn’t ‘Hamlet’ for the hundredth time — and this was it,” Mentz said.
“Vampire Cowboy Trilogy” is a three-act comedy that doesn’t pull any punches. It relies heavily on stage combat and choreographed fighting to produce a comic book aesthetic in homage to the so-called nerd culture that inspired its creation. Each of the three acts has its own separate plot, and the play proceeds in historically chronological order.
The first act invokes the film noir of the 1920s with its ghost-and-detective plot. The second act takes the audience through the golden age of comic books and highlights the sensationalism of the Cold War. The third act combines the mystery and angst of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” with the adventure and intrigue of “Xena: Warrior Princess.”
“It would definitely be accurate to call this geek theater,” Mentz said.
Mentz’s production of the play will be the culmination of two years of work. Now a graduating senior, Mentz proposed the project in his sophomore year with hopes of directing it as a part of the Lab Season, a series of student-directed productions at the University that begins in September and ends in May. His proposal was rejected, but he continued to flesh it out, and at the end of last year, faculty advisers gave him the go-ahead to put on the show.
For the most part, Mentz’s adaptation is faithful to the original “Vampire Cowboy Trilogy” written by Qui Nguyen and Robert Ross Parker in 2003. The script contains very little direction in the way of sound, costuming or choreography, so Mentz assembled a crew of his peers to bring their own flair to the production.
“The department gave us a $250 budget, but we went under that and still made something very cool,” Mentz said.
Caila Gowland, the show’s costume designer, designed 27 different costumes for the production. With the help of faculty adviser Nick Erickson, she also choreographed nearly all of the play’s myriad fight scenes.
“We used a lot of ‘nicking,’ which is a comical style, so it looks and sounds like people are fighting because of the angles their bodies are moving at, but no one’s getting hurt,” Gowland said.
Lauren Stefanski, the show’s sound designer, incorporated both custom sounds and iconic cinematic scores into each scene.
“There’s comic sounds, and then there’s the themes to ‘Pokemon,’ ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Rocky,’ and they all sound really cool together,” Stefanski said.
Mentz chose to direct “Vampire Cowboy Trilogy” precisely because of its comedic attributes. There are a few darker scenes in the play designed to temporarily jar the audience from the whimsical experience.
“I love comedy, and I think it works best in contrast — it’s about creating expectation and then disrupting it,” Mentz said.
“Vampire Cowboy Trilogy” premieres at 7:30 p.m. tonight. The show will run at the same time every night until Saturday and conclude with a Sunday matinee at 2 p.m. Tickets can be purchased at the door for $10.
“It would definitely be accurate to call this geek theater.”

Gallery • 2 Photos

Taylor Balkom

Captain Justice (right, theatre junior Jacob Voisin) speaks to Lady Liberty (left, theatre junior Yvette Bourgeois) on Sunday, March 9, 2014 during a dress rehearsal of Vampire Cowboy in the Music and Dramatic Arts Building.