Pride Films and Plays' KILL YOUR BOYFRIENDS Plays National Pastime Theatre, Now thru 7/26

Pride Films and Plays continues its exciting, award-winning development of new works for the stage with Kill Your Boyfriends, a world premiere fever dream of movement and text created, choreographed, and directed by PFP Artistic Associate Derek Van Barham. "You must kill your boyfriends," poet Alex Dimitrov tells us. "You must kill what wants, like death, to keep you."

On a hot night, we find two couples in a single bed. It's just an old mattress, really. Finding each relationship at a moment of strain, we watch the characters try to make it through one more night, each unable to sleep, refusing to rest. The performance uses text - from Richard Siken, Alex Dimitrov, Sylvia Plath, Sharon Olds, Thom Gunn, MarTy McConnell, Amanda Nazario, Shakespeare, Edward Albee, and Walt Whitman - that voices the panic and obsession that threaten to consume. Fear of sex. Fear of death. Fear of sleep and the fight against its tranquil oblivion. You always hurt the one you love. Or, at the very least, the one who sleeps next to you.

Kill Your Boyfriends features James Nedrud, Erik Strebig, Sarah Goldberg, Karen Vance, Carmen Molina, and Christopher Young. Music is by The Dresden Dolls, Mogwai, Cat Power, Lana Del Rey, The Civil Wars, Portishead, Andrew Bird, Patsy Cline, with original compositions by sound designer Alex Mauney.

Kill Your Boyfriends will perform as part of The Naked July Festival at Nation66al Pastime Theatre (June 28-August 10).

Performances are: Saturdays - today, July 6, 13, 20, 27 @ 8PM; Sundays - July 7, 14, 21, 28 @ 3PM; Friday, July 26 @ Midnight.

Tickets are $20 and can be purchased at Brown Paper Tickets.