'Murder Ballad Murder Mystery'
Paper Chairs resurrects its hit musical as portable, hit-and-run bar entertainment
By Robert Faires, Fri., Nov. 15, 2013
Usually, when a play reaches the end of its run, it's dead, departed, gone with the wind. Once in a while, though, a show gets pulled back from oblivion, and such is the case with Murder Ballad Murder Mystery, the backwoods musical by Elizabeth Doss (book) and Mark Stewart (score) that scored critical raves and multiple awards when it premiered in 2009. Now, like the ghost-faced killers who populate its swampy setting, it once more walks among us – only this time the show won't be haunting a theatre as it did in its original co-production by Tutto Theatre and Vortex Repertory Company, and it won't be the full-length, site-specific spectacle seen before. Paper Chairs, the company that grew out of that staging, has reconceived the show as a shorter, portable production to be presented in saloons. The new incarnation will debut at three local watering holes, as well as one in New Orleans (for the New Orleans Fringe Festival), and one in Marfa. The cast has been whittled down to eight characters, and director Keri Boyd and designer Lisa Laratta have worked to make the space adaptable to any environment. Playwright/performer Doss explains the show's second life in an email exchange.Click to read interview at the Austin Chronicle
When the world's greatest dancer is ghoulishly disfigured in a fire, she trades her heart to regain her physical beauty. But this shady deal robs her of her greatest gift: her ability to dance. So she sets a curse on the rest of the world, abolishing all dancing forever. Time passes and bleakness grows beneath a grey sky raining ash until a young spritely seamstress,
With great pleasure, paper chairs announce, THE PICNIC PLAYS: READINGS ON SUNDAYS IN MAY. We
invite you give listen to some deft drafts of new work by local
playwrights Elizabeth Doss, Sarah Saltwick, and Jason Tremblay. Join us
these final spring Sundays to experience each play in a unique location
accompanied by refreshing cocktails and snacks to complete an ideally
idle Sunday afternoon.
production taking place in a warehouse, this time the huge Delta Millworks factory at 5th St. and Springdale Road in east Austin. Again I say “Aah, east Austin.” The place by its very existence gives the theatre world extremely rich settings and imagery, seemingly without end. The setting could not be more apt for presenting this dense, colorful and fantastically textured collection of six one-acts by Austin playwright Hank Schwemmer. The place was well-designed and prepared when the seating (no paper chairs) was set out around the space. I complimented scenic designer and director Lisa Laratta (one of four directors of these plays) that she had even designed in the sweet, aromatic wood fragrance that permeates the place. She said, “Yeah, that and the popcorn smell—it can’t be all one thing, you know.”
