Lisa D'Amour's FROZEN SECTION To Play At Catastrophic Theatre

Lisa D'Amour's FROZEN SECTION will run March 28 - April 19, 2025, at the Midtown Arts and Theater Center Houston (MATCH).

Come meet the idiosyncratic, delightfully panicked community who works and shops at Tyler's, a grocery store at the edge of the world. The Baker knits in the breakroom, while the Butcher laments a time gone by. In the cold air pouring from an open freezer case, The Wife and Mother dreams of a life she failed to live. By the dumpster in the alley, the cashier communes with the coyote, vaping and laughing, baring bellies and swapping secrets. Tenderness resides here. 

Do you, dear theatergoer, currently find yourself disoriented, disassociated, confused as to where to find “reality?”  Do you yearn for less screen time, better dreams, and a fresh head of lettuce plucked from the ground?  Then these are your people, this is your theatre.

In Frozen Section, an intentional community of shoppers and workers reckons with the recent arrival of a trickster coyote and supports their youngest, Sage, as they prepare to move on to a new city, a new life.

The relationship between The Catastrophic Theatre and celebrated playwright and die-hard Southerner Lisa D'Amour began when Catastrophic forerunner Infernal Bridegroom Productions commissioned and premiered her 2005 play Hide Town. Subsequently, Catastrophic produced her Anna Bella Eema in 2011 and Detroit (a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama) in 2014. 

Written with Catastrophic and its ensemble front-of-mind, Frozen Section operates in the realm between awake and asleep, marrying conscious to unconscious. Like its writer, the play seems to be in a constant state of becoming. Like the character of the coyote trickster it has been, for us, an agent of generative chaos. Frozen Section seems to stand outside of time but is uniquely attuned to the world we occupy today. It arrived when we most needed a new one. Good timing. 

As lights finally flicker then fade on our world we've known, our times call on us to build a new one, together. The community forged in Frozen Section provides us with a blueprint.

According to D'Amour, “It's both liberating and an honor to return to work with the mad geniuses at Catastrophic Theatre.  Catastrophic allows me to be the unrepressed and unruly playwright that I want to be, meaning Catastrophic lets me be my authentic self.  Houston is so lucky to have this company that lets theater be joyful, full-bodied and WILD.”

FROZEN SECTION stars Catastrophic core artists Noel Bowers, Raymond Compton, Jovan Jackson, Rebecca Randall, Jeanne Harris, Jeff Miller, T Lavois Thiebaud, Clarity Welch, and Abraham Zeus Zapata.

The production team includes Jason Nodler (director), Ryan McGettigan (set), Hudson Davis (lighting), Leah Smith (costumes), Shawn St. John (sound), Charlie Scott (assistant director), and Scout Sustala (stage manager).

Lisa D'Amour is a playwright, interdisciplinary artist, and one half of the OBIE-Award winning performance duo PearlDamour. She was a finalist for The Pulitzer Prize in Drama (her play Detroit) and received four Tony Award nominations (Airline Highway). Her plays have been produced on Broadway and at theatres across the country, including Playwrights Horizons, Clubbed Thumb, Manhattan Theater Club (all in NYC), Steppenwolf (Chicago), The Wilma Theater (Philadelphia), Woolly Mammoth Theater (Washington D.C.). Lisa lives in New Orleans, and she is the Distinguished Lecturer in Playwriting at the School of Theater and Dance at the University of Houston.

FROZEN SECTION runs March 28 - April 19, 2025, at the Midtown Arts and Theater Center Houston (MATCH). Tickets are on sale now and can be purchased at matchouston.org, by calling the MATCH box office at 713-521-4533, or in-person by visiting the MATCH box office at 3400 Main St.

Performances are Thursdays at 7:30 PM, Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 PM, and Sundays at 2:30 PM, with a Special Monday Night performance to be announced. 

                                                                                                         

Tickets to all performances are Pay-What-You-Can!

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