Hal Chambers on bringing Dracula to life

With Dracula creeping ever closer to the Reading Rep stage, we caught up with director Hal Chambers to talk horror, hive minds, rehearsal rooms and why this version of Bram Stoker’s classic definitely isn’t the Dracula you met at a Halloween party.

First things first: what does a director actually do?

A director’s job is to bring all of the different departments together to create a piece of storytelling that connects with an audience.

I think of myself as sort of a midwife. I bring life into the world from one space – the rehearsal room – and then bring it out to connect with the audience.

Basically, I’m constantly trying to imagine what it would be like to sit in the audience and experience the piece for the first time.

Or, in a much less pretentious way of putting it: I tell everyone what to do.

What draws you to horror – and to Dracula in particular?

I’ve always liked horror because I think it allows us to go deep inside what it is to process trauma and either live through it or be destroyed by it.

Every great horror story is a deep dive into some neurosis or struggle. Can we live through it, or are we going to be defined by it?

And Dracula is one of the ultimate horror stories.

There’s this idea of someone sucking your blood and then being able to access your consciousness. Dracula is effectively hijacking people – he’s like a hacker.

That feels incredibly relevant now. We’re all plugged in all the time and there’s something fascinating about that idea of the hive mind and mind control. You can see its influence in things like Stranger Things and Vecna, as well as in virtually every vampire story that has followed it.

We all think we know Dracula. What will be different about this production?

There are versions of Dracula everyone knows: the Hammer Horror version, the big collars, the deliciously camp, sexualised bloodsucker. Everyone’s probably dressed up as that Dracula at some drunken Halloween party.

This ain’t that.

This is much more about realism and a deep dive into the novel.

We’re bringing out the rawness of Bram Stoker’s story through Nick Lane’s extraordinary, epic, free-flowing adaptation. Scenes come thick and fast, and physically there’s a real sense of abstraction, memory and dream.

It’s not going to be a cheese fest. It’s a proper piece of drama.

And I hope that visually it’s going to leave people with nightmares. Sorry about that.

What do you want audiences to be talking about afterwards?

What’s wonderful about Dracula is that when he bites people, he unlocks something primal in them – who we really are underneath the clothes, the politics and all the intelligent things we say.

You see that transformation across the characters.

So I’d love people to leave asking: what is actually lurking underneath all of us?

Why did Stoker give Dracula so much charisma? Why isn’t he simply a straightforward villain?

There’s a sense in our version that we’re all vampires in some way. Is Dracula entirely the bad guy, or is he showing us something about who we really are?

I hope that’s what makes it uncomfortable. We have to look at ourselves in the mirror and ask who we are underneath all the bravado.

Dracula is a pretty intense story. How do you create the right atmosphere in the rehearsal room?

For me, it starts with being playful.

We do lots of work around the table where we become detectives, feast on the text and really understand it. But alongside that, I use games and exercises that get people out of their heads and awaken that playfulness you have as a child.

I wouldn’t ask anyone to do something I wasn’t comfortable doing myself. I try to create a room where everybody feels able to bring their full selves and their full souls to the work.

And with Dracula, everybody has to go through it.

Harker has to survive the horrors of the Transylvanian castle. Lucy goes on this horrific journey as Dracula takes her over. Mina is fighting for her soul.

Every actor has to go through the mill – and hopefully the audience goes through it with them and feels like they’ve lived a few lifetimes in the space of the show.

What’s something audiences never normally see about a director’s job?

The dreaming.

Directors are lurking in the shadows a bit like Dracula. We’re the puppet masters, but audiences never really see our work.

Before the actors even arrive, there’s a point where you sit with the text, let it wash over you and ask where you personally meet it at that moment in your life.

That changes every time you make something.

Right now, I’m meeting this play as a father of three daughters, so what happens to Lucy, Mina and the women in this story affects me very differently than it might have done a few years ago.

That moment where you and the play meet each other is one of my favourite parts of directing.

Finally: what film has genuinely scared you?

The Blair Witch Project. I saw it when I was 15 and the advertising convinced me it was real footage of something that had actually gone wrong.

I have never been so scared in my life. I lived near some woods and afterwards I remember looking out at them at night. Even now, whenever I walk through woods in the dark, I think about that film.

If you paid me a grand, I wouldn’t watch it again.

Dracula plays at Reading Rep Theatre from 23 September – 10 October 2026.

Book Dracula here