The Stolen Chair Theatre Company originally formed to create a show in the 2002 Philadelphia Fringe Festival. Twelve alumni and then current students at Swarthmore College spent the summer of 2002 developing Portrait of Dora as a Young Man, a theatrical collage freely inspired by Sigmund Freud's seminal case study, Fragments of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria. Using physical theater, farce, original music, and dance, the production put Freud on his own couch and played with the analyst's notion of family, gender identity, and normalcy.
The production's premiere was the first of the festival's 200+ offerings to sell-out, and enjoyed oversold houses for the remainder of its run. It earned the following review:
"[A] deliberately presentational, absurdist, tongue-in-cheek work of art...Actors drift seamlessly into and out of multiple characters, and into and out of elaborate movement and vocal french scenes. Beautiful stage-pictures are created..."
-Gabriel Nathan
City Paper, Philadelphia