Auditions - Monsters of the Villa Diodati

Mary Shelley sits down at her writing desk to compose the forward to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus. In assembling her memories of the creation of her famous monster, Mary also conjures figures from her past, all of whom have their own recollection of the summer of 1816. We are transported back 15 years, when Mary and her lover Percy Shelley have fled to Europe with her stepsister Claire Clairmont in tow. On the stormy shores of Lake Geneva, the threesome encounter Lord Byron and his personal physician John Polidori, in exile from the conservative moral attitudes of England. What transpires is a summer of debauchery, discovery and the creation of some of literature's most well-known monsters.