A Conversation with Playwright Jordan R. Young, "Bela Lugosi Meets Edna St. Vincent Millay," Hollywood Fringe Festival selection, Broadwater Black Box, by James Scarborough

Jordan R. Young's one-woman show "Bela Lugosi Meets Edna St. Vincent Millay" creates an unlikely but fascinating intersection of two cultural figures who never actually met. Rose London shifts effortlessly between roles - the narrator, Millay herself, and Lugosi - while revealing surprising parallels between the vampire actor and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet. Both achieved fame early, spoke against fascism, and struggled with addiction. The show places these historical figures within a story about an actress (Bettye Ackerman) who commissions a play about Millay from the narrator.

Young's script avoids the weaknesses of biographical plays through sharp comic timing and unexpected contrasts. The play doesn't try to create a literal meeting between the subjects but instead suggests they "intersect somewhere on a cosmic level" - both remembered for early triumphs they couldn't escape and both consumed by their art. The script wisely uses Millay's poetry sparingly while giving London room to break the fourth wall with direct commentary. As London moves from Millay's Upstate New York writing room to Lugosi on a Connecticut stage, we see how artists can be both immortalized and trapped by their most famous works.

An email conversation with Jordan R. Young follows.

JS: What inspired you to pair Bela Lugosi and Edna St. Vincent Millay, two figures who seemingly share little common ground?

JRY: I couldn’t think of two more unlikely people to connect. The link is provided by director Ted Post, a personal friend who mentored Clint Eastwood and directed virtually every actor in Hollywood—including Lugosi in a summer stock production of “Dracula” and Bettye Ackerman (best known for TV’s “Ben Casey”) in a one-woman show about Millay.

JS: Both subjects achieved early fame yet struggled with typecasting - Lugosi as Dracula, Millay as the voice of female rebellion in the 1920s. How central is this tension between artistic identity and public perception to your play?

JRY: That tension is very close to the heart of this play. People who enjoy success often lose their artistic identity in the process. Lugosi became so strongly identified with Dracula people couldn’t see him as anything else. Millay was the free spirit of Greenwich Village in the Jazz Age, but so much more. I’m always interested in the real individual who hides or is hidden behind the public image, the “secret” life they led.

JS: You frame the story through a narrator commissioned to write about Millay rather than presenting a straightforward biography. Why this approach?

JRY: I’d already written a more or less a straightforward biographical drama about Millay and wanted to do something different. This play was written during the pandemic, when the world as we knew it turned upside down, and I think that inspired me to take reality and turn it on its head, in a sense.

JS: You note both figures spoke against fascism and faced addiction. Which parallel between them surprised you most during your research?

JRY: The fact that they were both social activists who railed against the Nazis and laid their careers on the line. They were both rebels who didn’t hesitate to get involved when they saw injustice being done. Millay would leave her comfort zone and get out on the picket lines. Lugosi led his fellow actors in a protest against exploitation before he ever left Hungary. Who knew?

JS: The play suggests both Lugosi and Millay were "outlived by their creations." Is this ultimately a tragedy or triumph for an artist?

JRY: It’s sad that they were both limited by their success. Lugosi was capable of playing far more than vampires and fiends but got few opportunities. Millay was one of the great poets of the 20th century but so many people know her only for her poem about burning the candle at both ends. But I think their stories are ultimately triumphant. Their work is immortal.

JS: Your actress shifts between three distinct characters with minimal props or costume changes. What theatrical advantages does this stripped-down approach offer the material?

JRY: It focuses the attention on the story, with fewer distractions for the audience. And it helped me focus on what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it as I fine-tuned the script. The quick pace of the Fringe lends itself to this approach and almost demands it. Of course, it helps to have a phenomenal actress like Rose London and a wonderful director like Christine Cummings who can pull it off.

Performances are Thursday, June 5 at 8:00 p.m. (preview), Sunday, June 15 at 12:30 p.m., Tuesday, June 24 at 6:30 p.m., and Saturday, June 28 at 4:00 and 7:00 p.m. Tickets are $15. The Broadwater Black Box is located at 6322 Santa Monica Boulevard, Hollywood, California 90038. For more information, click here.