Before Duane Boutté speaks a word in “Dracula: The Journal of Jonathan Harker,” the audience has already begun the journey to Transylvania.
They board a boat in Beacon and cross a darkening Hudson River toward Pollepel Island, watching the ruins of Bannerman Castle grow larger as they approach. The Hudson Highlands rise around them. By the time Boutté appears before the smaller Bannerman Residence, the sun is disappearing and the stage has been set for Bram Stoker’s tale of an English solicitor trapped in the home of a monster.
“There’s a mood that is created just from being there,” says Boutté, who returns to the island this month following the production’s sold-out 2025 run. “Dracula is a nighttime story, right? And here you are at night. We wait until the sun is going down before we start the show.”
Adapted by Jim Helsinger and directed by Christian Conn, the one-man production follows Harker to Castle Dracula, where he has been sent to deliver deeds to the Count before discovering that he is a prisoner. The story later moves to England, where Harker joins Mina, Van Helsing, and their companions in an attempt to stop Dracula. Boutté plays all 10 characters.
The actor, director, and Carmel resident came to the production through Hudson Valley Shakespeare, which recommended him when the Bannerman Castle Trust sought a local performer. Initially approached as a possible director or actor, Boutté quickly recognized the complications of mounting the show on an island with limited electrical power. The material, however, proved irresistible. “I asked, ‘If I help you find a director, would you consider me to act?’” he recalls.
Performing 10 roles requires Boutté to move instantly among distinct voices, bodies, motivations, and dialects. The first act largely belongs to Harker and Dracula. Early in the second, the dramatic population suddenly expands: Harker and Mina arrive at a sanatorium, where they encounter Van Helsing, Lucy’s fiance, and the Texan adventurer Quincey Morris.
“Within minutes, you’re in a room of five people,” Boutté says. “The audience by then is accustomed to me in two characters. All of a sudden, you have these five people figuring out how we’re going to deal with this guy.”
Boutté describes the performance as “a workout in the best possible way,” though his goal is for audiences to stop noticing the technical feat. “I want them to hear the story and experience each character as individual,” he says. “I want to create a fuller experience and not focus so much on it being me.”
Last year, the enormity of memorizing the script consumed much of his preparation. Boutté began learning lines three months before rehearsals, uncertain whether he could pull off the undertaking. Returning to the role has allowed him and Conn to slow down—not the production’s pace, but their exploration of the story—and draw out the psychological horror beneath its familiar bats, blood, and fangs.
Boutté traces his approach to advice he received during a film-acting workshop as a teenager: If the actor truly thinks something, the audience experiences it. “When it comes to communicating horror, it’s about taking the time to be in the experience of what’s happening,” he says. “If the audience is hearing the words and seeing the room you’ve stepped into, they’ve already got a lot of information.”
The intimate outdoor setting permits that restraint. Projections play across the ruins of the Bannerman residence, and Boutté occasionally enters the building, performing one scene from a second-story window. Mostly, though, he remains close to the audience as the actual night gathers around them.
“Dracula: The Journal of Jonathan Harker” will be performed September 15–20, 23, 25, and 26 on Bannerman Island. Boats depart from the Beacon waterfront at 6 and 7pm. Tickets, including the round-trip cruise and an island tour or lecture, are $75–$80. There will be addtioinal performances at Saint Rita’s Music Room in Beacon October 30-November 1.
