Festival of Plays-by-Mail Premieres SPITE & MALICE

A collective of 13 theater companies and individual artists from 8 cities across the globe have joined forces for POST THEATRICAL, a festival of works that use mail as a theatrical medium. The only Los Angeles-based project, the interactive fantasy SPITE & MALICE, runs March 22 - April 30, 2021 and is helmed by local award-winning writer/director Chelsea Sutton.

Described by the New York Times as the "most ambitious initiative yet," Post Theatrical was conceived and coordinated by Pittsburgh's RealTime Interventions, and features a diverse range of works that use the medium of mail in a broad range of ways.

Spite & Malice is a theatrical fantasy adventure and interactive fiction that utilizes playing cards, audio drama, found objects, 1800-numbers and mail-based interaction to lead you through a tangled correspondence between the King, the Queen, and Jack, who are racing to win the longest-running card game in the universe. A rogue ex-player is breaking the rules as she searches the stars for her disappeared grandmother.

"I grew up playing cards with my grandmother, so cards really do represent a whole universe to me," says Sutton. "In the aftermath of her death, and in the middle of this heavy year for all of us, the way I've chosen to explore grief and luck and connection is through a magical realism lens aimed at the things she's left behind."

"The goals of Post Theatrical are to support participating artists in making new work both during this time and in response to it," says RealTime Interventions Artistic Directors Molly Rice and Rusty Thelin. "The mail service arose from a need to communicate, like theater; and like theater, it survived all manner of disease and disaster. This Spring, Post Theatrical will be celebrating that resilience."

Spite & Malice features performances by Lisa Sanaye Dring, Anil Margsahayam, Liana Mesaikou and Kate Weinberg, and visual art by Mauro Flores Jr., Matt G. Hill. Lori Meeker, and Kate Weinberg.

Spite & Malice tickets are available now through April 4 for $25, which includes shipping costs. For more information and to purchase Spite & Malice, visit www.PostTheatrical.org. For more information and to watch the trailer, visit Slippedbeyond.com.

Tickets for all 13 shows in the Post Theatrical Festival range from Pay-What-You-Can to $100. Complete details on individual projects within the festival are compiled and continually updated at www.PostTheatrical.org. The festival launched February 1 and will run through June 30, 2021.

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