Suzan Beraza (below) as Mina’s sister Ellen, after she comes home bitten in Nosferatu

The stage is in shadows—only one bright beam breaks through from above. A tall, bald figure, with pointed, elongated ears, black oval eyes and sepia-toned skin moves in silently. In the dark, he’s draped in an earth-colored cloak, which moves when his body does. He pauses and raises his hands slowly out of his trailing sleeves. His fingers are long, with carefully shaped nails. They hang from hands that seem to rise by themselves. It’s Nosferatu—the vampire.

The moment is transfixing. Actor and movement, costume/ makeup and lighting all converge. And from this symbiotic fusion, the collaboration between the director, the costume/set designer and the lighting designer bear fruit. For director René Migliaccio, set and costume designer François Tomsu and lighting designer Stephanie Johnson, this is a partnership of talent that has formed over the years; recently it came together again for Telluride Repertory Theatre Company’s production of Nosferatu, which was performed in New York City last spring before opening in Telluride, Colorado, this past July.

“We have the same philosophy and a kind of energy that is similar,” says Tomsu, by phone from Paris, as he describes Nosferatu’s international production/design team. The Algerian-born Migliaccio, who grew up in Montreal, the product of Italian and French parents, is based both in Europe and the U.S., while Tomsu is headquartered in the City of Light and Johnson is ensconced in California. “I don’t see anyone else able to replace them,” says Migliaccio. “They come in at the start. Then we move the discussion into deeper layers together.”

Nikolai Kinski as Nosferatu takes a bite out of Mina, played by Annie Alquist, in the Telluride Rep’s production of Nosferatu.

Migliaccio has been working with the decade-old Telluride Company for a year and a half. He began by directing a production of Euripides’ Medea, based on his concept of expressionistic realism, which is the guiding theory for Nosferatu as well. “You start with realistic content but you push beyond,” explains Migliaccio. “You express that moment but not the photographic experience. You push beyond naturalism.” He draws inspiration from such avant-garde sources as Antonin Artaud, the notorious French philosopher and playwright, and Jerzy Grotowski, the Polish stage director (and experimental theater forefather). He has also been influenced by Japanese theater genres like Noh and Kabuki. For Migliaccio, “gesture is the ultimate conveyor of the drama.”

It’s a style of theater that he has been developing since 1983, through such diverse plays as Genet’s The Maids, Brecht’s Fear And Misery Of The Third Reich, Goldoni’s The Servant Of Two Masters and Odets’ Awake and Sing. Tomsu has worked with him on five productions; Johnson on three.

Migliaccio first tackled Nosferatu in Paris in 1996. “I didn’t want to do something from the theater, but from literature or film,” he recalls in a New York City coffee shop during the run of Nosferatu. He had always admired filmmaker F. W. Murnau, director of the 1922 vampire silent, Nosferatu, “for his sheer possession of the frame, the quality of emotion and aesthetic content.”

But a central image came to him in a dream. It was the painting called “The Nightmare” by Johann Heinrich Fussli, which is one of many images projected onto the back wall of the theater. The painting, which depicts a sexual and ominous demon sitting above a sleeping nude woman’s bedside, is part of Johnson’s lighting design for the production. From this image Migliaccio’s conception of the play grew.

After watching Murnau’s classic film, Migliaccio decided to use that version as the framework for his play, rather than the original novel penned by Bram Stoker. The show’s celluloid roots are evident throughout the production—from the sepia-toned hues to Nosferatu’s otherworldly hand movements to Johnson’s still photo and caption projections, taken from the film. Migliaccio says the production would not have been viable for him without the latter components. “Murnau has to be part of the production,” he insists. “[The projections] allow you to go beyond the wall of the theater.”

The play is choreographed by Migliaccio, who directs a ghoulish chorus to move both as a collective wave and as sharply defined individuals. They have white faces and deep blackened eyes, but individualized movements—many based on the elevated dramatic gestures of silent movies. “I wanted to create a physical language,” he says. “If you have an emotion, an idea, how do I translate that into a physical form?”

Nosferatu is played by Nikolai Kinski, the 24-year-old son of German-Polish actor Klaus Kinski, who starred in the 1979 Werner Herzog remake of Nosferatu. But Nikolai Kinski was not chosen for his name or his ancestry. He had worked with Migliaccio while studying at UCLA in a production of Antonin Artaud’s The Cenci, which was later performed in Paris.

The director worked with the Telluride Company for nine months before the show opened in New York last May. “It’s a very demanding style physically,” says Migliaccio. “They have to go beyond the movement itself with their own tools as actors.”

But he had been working with his two other collaborators, Tomsu and Johnson, since their previous production of Nosferatu at the University of Paris. “We’ve had conversations about the production going on for four years,” relates Johnson, “on the telephone, through e-mail, and in person.”

For creative inspiration, Migliaccio showed Johnson paintings by Caspar David Friederich, the 19th-century German Romantic painter. Impressed, Johnson selected a few of the painter’s works, in addition to stills culled from the silent film, to be projected onto the back wall, pushing it back for the audience. Her stark light helps with “the physicalization” of the play, dividing the stage into separate areas. It mirrors the contrast between dark and light, reflected by Nosferatu and Mina, the woman who eventually sacrifices herself.

Annie Alquist as Mina has an anguished moment.

The set was minimalist and dark, with two wooden platforms at each end of the long, narrow performance space. It was like a black canvas upon which all the elements of the play—actors, costumes, projections and sounds—were painted. Tomsu describes his collaboration this way: “René works with actors. I work with paint. For me, costumes are not costumes, but paint, and my square of fabric is a stage.” Tomsu was continually modifying the set—repainting the floor, for example, while the show was running in New York. “Nothing is ever finished,” he muses. “I’m always adding pieces to it.”

Migliaccio, Tomsu and Johnson view their collaboration as a continuing thread since they also work on separate projects, as well as with each other. “We have been cross-fertilizing each other’s works for years,” says Johnson.