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The TRAP DOOR THEATRE
Beholder
Cast: Featuring Betsy Zajko as Paula, with Jason Huysman, John Kahara, Judy Loyd, and Kristen Williams
Runs: Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 PM. Purchase Tickets Online 773-384-0494
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This production has been recommended for a Joseph Jefferson Award. |
Wonderfully evocative! A protofeminist tale that also delves deeply into the push-pull of an artist's psyche -- Prestininzi's play is as poetic, emotionally fraught and unresolved as the lives of its fascinating (and perfectly neurotic) characters. Betsy Zajko [gives] a wonderfully unpredictable, volatile, self-testing performance that perfectly echoes her character. Directed by Kate Hendrickson with great sensitivity and a sense of true emotional wildness, the production is as beautiful and richly haunted as a Modersohn-Becker painting.
"Highly recommended! Top five shows to see!"
"Bold and beguiling! A fierce, brassy, and throughly convincing portrait of a true revolutionary. Strong performances and crisp mercifully humorous writing make this uncompromising play a taste worth cultivating." "An exceptionally wonderful world premiere. Beautifully voyeuristic and dramatically intimate. Filled with breathtaking observations on art and love, this is as much a portrait of the artist in general as it is a specific rendering of Paula Modersohn-Becker’s life and work. Betsy Zajko and Kristen Williams Smith have magnificent chemistry together, as Paula and her friend Clara Rilke-Westhoff respectively. Judy Loyd delivers Anna Dreeban, model for and friend to Paula, with subtle comic timing and commanding presence. Alison Chesley’s original musical composition is exquisite. Trap Door Theatre continues to exemplify extraordinary and curious lives with this compelling and unique production" |
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.”
Opens: Thursday, May 15, 2008 at 8 PM.
Closes: Saturday, June 21, 2008 at 8 PM.
Runs: Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 PM.
Admission: $20 (2-for-1 on Thursdays)
Purchase Tickets Online
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