Lawrence C. Connolly

Tag: Prime Stage Theatre

  • Frankenstein: The Creation Scene

    Sutured body parts, flashing electrodes, bubbling chemicals–they’re some of the best-known elements of the Frankenstein creation scene. And none are in the novel. For over 200 years, playwrights, screenwriters, comic artists, and (more recently) game designers have endeavored to fill in the blanks of a process that Mary Shelley’s narrative covers in fewer than 100…

  • Thinking Like a Writer: Finding the Words

    For Mark Twain, “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.” For Mary Shelley, it is the difference between creature and being. We can see her deliberation in the excerpt (at left) of her Frankenstein manuscript, where she makes a choice that best…

  • One Night in Geneva:
    The Birth of a Prosperous Progeny

    In 1831, her first novel having achieved pop-culture status thanks to a string of adaptations in England, Europe, and America (see last week’s post), Mary Shelley introduced the second edition of Frankenstein by writing: “Once again, I bid my hideous progeny go forth and prosper.” Little could she have foreseen just how prosperous it would…

  • A Monster of a Mix Up:
    The Strange Case of Creepy No. 10

    Today we continue unpacking some of the titles mentioned during my conversation with Brentley Palmer and Nicholas Schwartz in the Frankenstein installment of their Horror Drafts podcast. if you haven’t listened to that discussion, you can find it here. As for the previous blog posts in this series, you can find them here and here. …

  • Not Your Universal Monster:
    The Hammer Frankenstein Series

    It’s alive! Out of the lab and in your earbuds, the latest episode of the Horror Drafts podcast featuring a two-hour discussion of all things Frankenstein is available now. Here’s the description from the podcast site: This week we are joined by author, screenwriter, playwright, podcaster, and all-around Frankenstein expert Lawrence C. Connolly to draft…

  • This Week on Mystery Theatre:
    Flipping, Turning, and Rotating Clues

    The person in the picture is not standing by a lake. In fact, he isn’t standing at all—a realization that becomes obvious once the photo is rotated 90 degrees to the left, at which point we see that the boy is lying with his back to a fallen tree and a foot propped against its…