Chaste
Written by Ken Prestininzi
Directed by Kate Hendrickson

May 13, 2010 - June 19, 2010
Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 8pm
$20 (2-for-1 on Thursdays)
Purchase Tickets Online

Featuring: Antonio Brunetti, John Kahara, Sara Tolan Mee,  and Tiffany Joy Ross

Director Kate Hendrickson and playwright Ken Prestininzi tapped into the mesmerizing and maddening with AmeriKafka, while their intimate and bold Beholder garnered several awards, including the 2008 Jeff Award for Best New Work. Now these two longtime collaborators seek out the ecstatic in Chaste.

Chaste is the third in a series of Prestininzi plays (all premiered at Trap Door under Hendrickson’s direction) taking inspiration from the lives of German-speaking thinkers and artists: Franz Kafka in AmeriKafka, Rainer Maria Rilke & Paula Modersohn-Becker in Beholder, and now Friedrich Nietzsche in Chaste.

In 1882 Paul Ree introduced his friend Nietzsche to a young Russian woman named Lou Salome (a novelist, essayist, and thinker who would later become a muse and colleague to both Rilke and Freud). The three formed a plan to live together as a chaste trio dedicated to a life of the mind. Calling up and distorting this history, Chaste wildly imagines what would have happened if they had realized their dream. In this chaste ménage a trios, Nietzsche bets the triumph of his will against the incomparable desires of a virginal girl. Despite their promises to bring out the most brilliant in each other, a primal battle for love and domination begins. Their unchecked ambition and reckless intimacy surprises all three. Pygmalion never had it so bad, nor Red Riding Hood so good, as they do in this perverse comedy of their own devising.

Hendrickson and Prestininzi began working together in the early 1990s when Hendrickson commissioned Prestininzi to write The Hole, a new play inspired by Dostoyevsky’s Notes From Underground. They’ve sustained their collaborative relationship for over 15 years, and under the auspices of Trap Door Theatre, it is thriving. In their work, Hendrickson and Prestininzi spark each other to make precise leaps of imagination, intellect and emotion in order to invite and instigate palpable human connections with the theatrical choices they make. Together they form a director/playwright team of shared reverie, theatrical vision and the belief in the persuasion of intimacy and commitment.

Assistant Director Jen Ellison / Sound Designers Jason Meyer & Shane Oman / Lighting Designer Gina Patterson / Set Designer Joseph Riley /
Stage Manager Gary Damico / Costume Designer Nevena Todorovic /
Makeup Designer Zsófia Ötvös / Graphic Designer Michal Janicki

Trap Door Theatre Presents...
The Final Performance on American Soil Before our Eastern European Tour of:

A Couple of Poor Polish-Speaking Romanians

Tuesday May 4th , 8:00 pm
FXK Theater
Reynolds Club, 3rd floor,
5706 S University Ave.

The Renaissance Society and University Theater are pleased to host Trap Door Theater's farewell production of A Couple of Poor Polish-Speaking Romanian by Dorota Maslowska. This is its last staging before Trap Door takes it on the road to Poland and Romania.

This event will take place in
FXK Theater, Reynolds Club, 3rd floor, 5706 S, University Ave.
FREE

International Voices Project

Trap Door will be performing at the International Voices Project on May 27.
Read more about the festival..

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Trap Door Theatre in Europe

Trap Door in Virginia and New York!

Horses at the Window

Trap Door Theatre's inventive production of Matei Visniec's Horses at the Window in collaboration with critically acclaimed Romanian director, Radu-Alexandru Nica, will perform as part of the Tenth National Symposium of Theatre in Academe at Washington and Lee University in Lexington Virginia.  A poetic parody of war's long-reaching effects on the home-front, Horses at the Window reflects the central theme of this year's symposium, "Eros and Thanatos; Sexuality, War and Violence."

The work will be observed and discussed by various international academic panelists and students.  The event will take place November 11-15, 2009 at the Washington and Lee University.  The joint event proposes to gather theater scholars, teachers, and practitioners as well as theater activists in an open exchange of ideas and artistic expressions relevant to the main themes.  These joint events also aim to create international collaborations through theater, innovative and life affirming artistic products, and exchanges in a world of crisis and violence.