- Jon Stancato and Stolen Chair was recently awarded an Economic Development for Performing Arts grant to develop Community Supported Theatre. Read the latest over at the ERPA blog
- Theatre Is Dead and So Are You premiered January 9 in East Village's Connelly Theater. Read the obituary
- The two mainstage productions of Stolen Chair's 2007 season, Kinderspiel and Kill Me Like You Mean It, were recently published in independent volumes by United Stages. They are available for sale at the Drama Book Shop or by contacting us here.
Theatre Is Dead and So Are You
Vote for Theatre Is Dead @ NYIT Awards
A vaudevillian take on mortality that
stares
death in the face and laughs.
Performances: Jan 9 - Jan 31
The Connelly Theater
Thanks to all who helped make Theatre Is Dead and So Are You a success.
NYtheatre.com's Pick of the Week!:
"A macabre and weirdly off-kilter cabaret
that
revels in death: in looking this greatest of taboos in the face
and
then throwing a custard pie at it..smart, stylish, and
virtuosic,
deconstructing what bothers us about the Final Rest by throwing as
many theatrical gimmicks as possible at it. If the opportunity to
see one of indie theater's smartest and most adventurous young
companies tangle with the Unknowable tantalizes you, then a visit
to the Connelly may well be in order."
- Martin Denton, NYtheatre.com
"Kiran Rikhye's raucous spectacle is a pastiche of dead and dying theatrical forms: song-and dance, slapstick, melodrama and old-timey conjuring. Loosely structured as a wake for a dead MC as performed by his now bereft charges, the script of Theatre Is Dead and So Are You is merely a vehicle by which this young but accomplished downtown theater company can resurrect the corpus of companies past and you, the viewer, too. Bottom Line: A Frankenstein-y send up of old theater forms performed by young, vital and warm bodies, happily proving its title wrong"
-Joshua David Stein, New York Press
Check out rehearsal photos, production stills, and more.
Written by Kiran Rikhye
Directed by Jon Stancato
Dramaturgy & Music Direction by Emily Otto
Lights & Set by David Bengali
Costumes by Julie B. Schworm
Stage Management & Props by Aviva Meyer
Postcard by Carrie Leonard and Aviva Meyer
Featuring: David Bengali, David Berent*, Julia Coe, Rainbow Dickerson*, Tommy Dickie, Liza Wade Green, Noah Schultz, David Skeist, Alexia Vernon
Theatre is Dead and So Are You is an irreverent funeral for the stage. Read the obituary. A ragtag bunch of variety hacks are laying their sometimes beloved MC to rest, performing his funeral live, travelling from city to city, until such time as his body is too decomposed to make the proceedings pleasant. Their "eulogies" are performed à la classic variety, with slapstick, melodrama, song & dance, and feats of illusion and mentalism, each taking its own deadly turn as they celebrate the life and death of their dearly departed dead dead dead friend. Even in their joyous performance, a spectre looms as each knows they've all been exposed to the fatal disease that killed their MC: Life. Watch these seasoned has-beens kill theatre, live before your very eyes.
Chosen as “Best of Manhattan 2007” by New York Press, The Stolen Chair Theatre Company is a critically-acclaimed award-winning collaborative theatre laboratory dedicated to the theft, recycling and re- examination of historical performance styles, and to the creation of visually stunning and uniquely contemporary work where the earnest and ironic happily co- exist. Since its inception in 2002, Stolen Chair has created 12 critically- acclaimed original works including the absurdist noir Kill Me Like You Mean It and the Weimar child’s-play cabaret Kinderspiel, both published by United Stages. Their 2005 silent film for the stage, The Man Who Laughs,was published in the anthology Playing With Canons: Explosive New Works from Great Literature by America's Indie Playwrights.
Stolen Chair's programs are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts.
