The Stolen Chair Theatre Company

We had a very full weekend with scene work, music rehearsals (5 original songs in multi-part harmony), combat rehearsals (2 mass battles and 3 duels), production meetings, a podcast, and our postcard design (see right), not to mention all of the costume and set building that's happening for the show. I still haven't seen the entire 18 person cast in the same room yet, but I'll have that chance over the weekend. Big as this show is (it's really really really BIG!), the production itself is only one of the many many things that will be happening during the run. On the evenings that ... Read Full Story

Long time blog readers will remember the film noir and absurdism interview series we conducted in the weeks leading up to the opening of Kill Me Like You Mean It . Well, as we countdown to the opening of Commedia dell'Artemisia at the Pretentious Festival , we wanted to bring in some of the country's leading experts on mask design, commedia dell'arte, Moliere, and verse playwriting to share their thoughts. Today I'd like to introduce you to Jonathan Becker: actor, teaching artist, dancer, puppeteer, puppet designer, dancer, fight choreographer and...mask-maker! I've been teaching Commedia and directing with Jonathan's neoprene masks (purchased at theater-masks.com ) ... Read Full Story

I'd like to introduce you all to a man who surely needs no introduction if you have been a working indie theatre artist in NYC for the past decade or so: verse playwright Kirk Wood Bromley. As Artistic Director and founder of Inverse Theater , Kirk has written and self-produced 8 verse plays and 2 musicals, one of which, Want's Unwisht Work is published in Playing with Canons alongside Stolen Chair's The Man Who Laughs . His awards and accolades are far too many to mention, but you should get to know this playwright's work as soon as you possibly can. I'll give you ... Read Full Story

In our attempts to devote even more time to the laboratory process in 2009, we have already started research on Stolen Chair's newest original work, Quantum Poetics , even though we probably won't even be thinking about scheduling the first creative retreat until this fall (once we have started the CST ). Since the piece will draw inspiration from recent advances in neuroscience and theoretical physics, research has been both challenging and thrilling. Fortunately, writers like Brian Greene and Jonah Lehrer have made these fields so accessible that I find I'm not only able to grasp this heady material, but actively salivate over the ... Read Full Story

The Tragic Swashbuckler Playdate: Tuesday, Dec 11 (evening) The Stolen Chair Theatre Company invites all interested male collaborators to join us for 2 hours of collective creation as we begin developing The Tragic Swashbuckler, the third installment of our critically-acclaimed CineTheatre Tetralogy, a 1930s swashbuckler by way of Aeschylus, exploring how susceptible morality can be to the conflicting pulls of loyalty to self, lover, family, fraternity, nation, and god. This comic mash-up will feature rapier duels and rapier wit as it satirizes humanity's dependence on moral codes, however flimsy they might be. We're starting from scratch on this and we need your help. If ... Read Full Story