Stolen Chair Presents KINDERSPIEL and STAGE KISS, 1/27

Two of Stolen Chair's most acclaimed works, the gender-bent blank verse sex-farce, Stage Kiss, and the debaucherous childs-play cabaret, Kinderspiel, return to NYC for a 6-week repertory run: January 27-March 5.

While other companies are contracting in the recession, Stolen Chair inaugurates its 9th season with its most ambitious plans yet: a 6-week-long repertory run of two of Kiran Rikhye's most critically-acclaimed works, Kinderspiel and Stage Kiss. Directed by Jon Stancato, "one of the most daring and imaginative directors of his generation" (Martin Denton, NYtheatre.com), the plays will run on alternating weeks, open to the press beginning January 28 (Stage Kiss) and Feb 4 (Kinderspiel). Andy Phelan (Milk Milk Lemonade) leads Stage Kiss's ensemble cast, David Skeist (Havana Journal) leads Kinderspiel's ensemble, and both feature Stolen Chair veterans Liza Wade Green and Liz Eckert with design by David Bengali (sets) and Julie B. Schworm (costumes).

Stolen Chair's taboo-flaunting Kinderspiel tells the totally fabricated true story of a scandalous Weimar-era club where adults play like children...and customers pay to watch! In Berlin's seedy and seditious demimonde, five lost souls find each other (and sold-out audiences) when their curious fetish inspires a revolutionary movement. In a 4-star review of the 2007 premiere, Raven Snook (TimeOut NY) praised the "haunting...No Exit decked out in fishnets and art deco decay."

In Stage Kiss, Stolen Chair's blank verse love letter to Charles Ludlam, two young virgins independently decide to escape the randy Neptune's annual raping festival by donning drag and taking to the woods where the two newly butched "boys" fall deeply in lust. With a little help from a drunken Venus eager for some boy-on-boy action, the two newly gender-questioning protagonists learn that love is a many gendered thing. In its 2006 premiere, Martin Denton (NYtheatre.com) raved it was ""[A] delight from start to finish: it truly puts the 'play' back in play" and offoffonline named it among the year's best.

Both pieces have gained surprising new relevance since their premieres. Our own recession sets the stage for Kinderspiel and Weimar Berlin's provocative questions about how economic desperation changes the role of artists. Likewise, our contentious nationwide debate on gay marriage and the recent spate of gay suicides provides a new counterpoint to Stage Kiss' gender-bending delights.

New York Press' best "genre-bending theatre," Stolen Chair is a theatre laboratory dedicated to the creation of playfully intellectual, wickedly irreverent, and exuberantly athletic original works. Proudly plundering the pop culture of the past half millennium, Stolen Chair's aesthetically promiscuous work recycles and reinvents old genres and stories to discover new ways to challenge and delight contemporary audiences. Pioneer of the Community Supported Theatre movement, Stolen Chair is supported, in part, by the Nancy Quinn Fund and by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and New York State Council on the Arts.

Performances at: Wings Theater, 154 Christopher Street (@ Greenwich St) | Subway: Christopher St (1, 2)
Tickets: $18 @ www.stolenchair.org or 1-800-838-3006 | Free adult beverages at all shows!
Stage Kiss performs: Jan 27-29, Feb 10-11, Feb 24-26 (@8pm), Feb 13 (@2pm) & March 3-5 (@10pm)
Kinderspiel performs: Feb 3-5, 17-19 (@8pm) & Mar 3-5 (@ 7:30pm)

 

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