The TRAP DOOR THEATRE
in cooperation with the GOETHE INSTITUT
presents:

from the writer and director of Trap Door's 2005 hit AmeriKafka
the World premiere of

Beholder

Written by: Ken Prestininzi
Directed by: Kate Hendrickson

Cast: Featuring Betsy Zajko as Paula, with Jason Huysman, John Kahara, Judy Loyd, and Kristen Williams

Music composed by Alison Chesley aka Helen Money
Lighting Design by Gina Patterson

May 15-June 21, 2008

Runs: Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 PM.
Admission: $20 (2-for-1 on Thursdays)

BEHOLDER is inspired by the notebooks and letters of  painter Paula Modersohn-Becker and her friend poet Rainer Maria Rilke. The script also takes inspiration from Rilke's poem Requiem for a Friend.

A love story on many levels, BEHOLDER explores how Paula's continually evolving relationship to her work is reflected in her relationship to herself and to the people in her life.

A year after Modersohn-Becker's death, Rilke sequestered himself in his room for three nights, and wrote the 259 line poem Requiem for a Friend. The poem is an outcry against her death, as well as a tribute to her greatness and vision as an artist.

During her short career Modersohn-Becker’s art was hardly known, although she produced over 400 paintings and at least a thousand drawings and graphic works. In art categories, she is hard to  place.  She is a rare individualist, a precursor to the German expressionist movement and a synthesizer of German and French sources. She describes her own development as a move towards “great simplicity of form.”