Primal Forces Presents AN ACCIDENT By Lydia Stryk

Primal Forces is proud to present the compelling drama, An Accident by Lydia Stryk at Empire Stage from May 2-May 27, 2018. Run down in a grocery store parking lot, a woman awakens weeks later in a mysterious altered state to find that the perpetrator has been continually at her side. Their interactions run the gamut from wary to warm; confrontational to erotically charged. The play is a fictionalized account of the recovery process the playwright endured after a serious accident, but it is also the drama she was denied-the coming to terms with the person who hit her.

"The show is a taut, psychological piece where both victim and perpetrator gradually change places. Libby's recovery and re-birth are borne of Anton's recklessness," explained director Keith Garsson. "While he had little fear in his car when he accidentally ran her down, it is during their face-to-face encounters that his inability to relate to a helpless woman emerges. The story never leads where you expect, it is, by turns, funny, suspenseful and very erotic."

When a woman is critically injured in an accident, can the same man who almost took her life save her? There are encounters in life that take you somewhere you've never been and never meant to go. With violent precision, savage imagery and theatrical vitality, Lydia Stryk writes an extraordinary play about recovery. An Accident is both visceral playground and emotional minefield. The play stars Elizabeth Price and Nicholas Wilder.

"Reuniting Elizabeth and Nicholas (from "Reborning" in Delray Beach) is a terrific experience for all of us. For that play, we watched an established relationship fall apart due to one woman's demons within," said Garsson. "This time, their astonishing acting range allows us to run the deck on a completely different relationship where external forces bring these two together with unexpected and sometimes very touching results."

About the Playwright:

Lydia Stryk was born in DeKalb, Illinois, birthplace of barbed wire. She grew up between DeKalb and London, England, and as a child also lived in Japan where she studied Kabuki and performed on the stage, and in Iran. She later trained to be an actress at the Drama Centre, London--a career she pursued in New York for exactly one year before going back to school to study history, education and later, journalism. While interning at the weekly journal, The Nation, she wrote a play, coming full circle back to the theatre, but this time as a writer. She has a Ph.D. in Theatre from the Graduate Centre of the City University of New York. Her dissertation, "Acting Hysteria: An Analysis of the Actress and her Part" was in part an attempt to understand why her own short-lived experience acting the woman's part on stage felt pathological. She is the author of fifteen full-length plays including Monte Carlo, The House of Lily, The Glamour House, Lady Lay, Safe House, On Clarion, Ghost Mall and American Tet, and a few short ones, which have been seen at festivals across the country and produced at, among others, Denver Center Theatre, Perseverance Theatre, Alaska, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Victory Gardens, The Contemporary American Theatre Festival, and in Germany at Schauspiel Essen, Theaterhaus Stuttgart and the English Theater Berlin. She has been commissioned by Pittsburgh Public Theatre and Geva Theatre, Rochester and is the recipient of a Berrilla Kerr Playwright Award. She lives between Berlin and New York City. www.lydiastryk.com

Empire Stage is located at 1140 N. Flagler Drive, Fort Lauderdale

Photo: Elizabeth Price, by LloydStudios

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