The National New Play Network World Premiere of PULP Opens October 7 at the Know

Washed-up PI Frank Ellery takes on the strangest case of his life. A hack literary agent has been gruesomely murdered, and the four suspects are the agent's remaining clients: wildly eccentric writers for different pulp magazines.

Frank dives into the mystery, and his world turns upside down as life begins to imitate literature. In this genre-bending comedy whodunnit, the plot swings from laughs to chills as science fiction, romance, adventure, and horror converge upon one down-on-his-luck gumshoe who's about to learn what really lurks between the lines.

In Pulp, playwright Joseph Zettelmaier, author of Know's 2015 hit Star Wars caper All Childish Things, puts classic genre tropes in a blender to create a brand new comedy that jumps from paperback to paperback down the bookshelves as the mystery unfolds.

Bringing this noir world to the stage is an all star cast of Cincinnati favorites.

Know's Education Director Maggie Lou Rader (Silent Sky, Hearts Like Fists) returns to the MainStage as femme-fatale romance writer Desiree St. Clair. Justin McCombs (Silent Sky, Moby Dick) takes on the role of Walter Kingston-Smith, a wealthy playboy who dabbles at writing superhero pulps. Know favorite Darnell Pierre Benjamin returns for the first time since 2014's Harry & the Thief as Bradley Rayburn, an up and coming sci-fi writer. Rounding out the the suspects is MadCap Puppets Artistic Director Dylan Shelton (The Dragon, Bull) as horror writer R.A. Lyncroft.

And making his Know Theatre debut as PI Frank Ellery is longtime Cincinnati Shakespeare Company ensemble member Paul Riopelle.

Pulp is part of a National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere, which kicked off at the Phoenix Theatre in Indianapolis last spring. The show will be produced at Michigan's Williamston Theatre concurrently to the Know's production.

NNPN's Rolling World Premiere program supports three or more theatres that choose to produce the same new play within a 12 month period. The result is a rolling world premiere, giving a playwright the chance to develop a new work with multiple creative teams in at least three different communities. The playwright is part of the process, working on the script and making adjustments based on what is learned from each production.

Pulp is the second NNPN rolling world premiere in which Know Theatre has taken part, the first being Steve Yockey's Pluto in 2014.

Says Artistic Director Andrew Hungerford,

"There are so many things that excite me about tackling this show: our fantastic cast, the thrill of working on an evolving world premiere script, and my own personal love for the pulp stories of the 30's through 50's. I grew up reading Ray Bradbury's science fiction, and the Maltese Falcon is a favorite of mine (both the book and the film). And of course we had such a great time with Joe's All Childish Things, we're excited to bring another of this prolific playwright's works to Cincinnati audiences."

Pulp runs October 7 through 29. Come find out what mayhem unfolds when reality becomes stranger than fiction in this rolling world premiere comedy.

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