Dark Horse Nights

STAGED READINGS AT MAD HORSE

Mad Horse Theatre Co. announces the new "Dark Horse Night" series in Season 39! Dark Horse Nights are staged reading events that will occur specifically during the run of mainstage productions, presenting works that act as conversation pieces supporting the mainstage season. These readings are opportunities for audiences and artists to engage in deeper conversations about the themes, topics, characters, and stories being presented throughout the season; and provide additional artistic opportunities for Company and Guest Artists to connect and engage. 

All Dark Horse Nights follow our pay-what-you-decide ticketing model. Make a no cost reservation, then pay after the performance.

ACCOMPANYING WOMEN LAUGHING ALONE WITH SALAD

JOANNE by Deborah Bruce, Laura Lomas, Theresa Ikoko, Chino Odimba and Ursula Rani Sarma
Wednesday, March 12 at 7:30pm
Wednesday, March 19 at 7:30pm
Directed by Riordan

Five characters share a common thread: Joanne. But it's not about her. It's about Stella, Grace, Alice, Kath, and Becky -- but what about Joanne? Commissioned by the women's prison theatre group Clean Break, some of the most exciting voices in theatre explore the pressures on our public services as one young woman buckles under pressures of her own.

Thoughts from the director: 
“In Women Laughing Alone with Salad the story centers around one Guy whose life descends into madness because of the "women who haunt him." Guy is caught motionless in the eye of the storm while the women around him dance, laugh, cry, scream, and suffer because of it. Joanne however, provides a different perspective based on the same principle: this story orbits around a missing piece. By offering a glimpse into Britain's criminal justice system through the service workers surrounding it, Joanne gives audiences a chance to step into the shoes of women that are striving for connection within a system that is structurally opposed to empathy. This piece begs the question: How do strangers see us? What happens when they intervene in our lives? And more importantly, what happens when they don’t?”

The reading includes company member Marie Stewart Harmon and guest artists Hope Reardon and Chantal Moniba Austen.

ACCOMPANYING A DELICATE BALANCE

THE BREASTS OF TIRESIAS by Guillaume Apollinaire
Wednesday, January 22 at 7:30pm
Wednesday, January 29 at 7:30pm
Directed by Nick Schroeder

In the play, set in Africa, a Frenchwoman, Thérèse, decides to become a man, and her breasts float away like two balloons; she is renamed Tiresias and becomes a general and a member of parliament. Between the first and second acts, her abandoned husband gives birth to over 40,000 children, all in one afternoon. Tiresias was a central figure in modernist attempts to explore sexual identity, playing a notable role in T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, Ezra Pound’s Cantos (1919-1970), and Virginia Woolf‘s Orlando (1928), about a man who becomes a woman and lives for over three hundred years. Originally written in 1903, THE BREASTS OF TIRESIUS was first staged in 1917.

ACCOMPANYING WITCH

THE WITCH OF EDMONTON By William Rowley, Thomas Dekker, and John Ford
Wednesday, October 16 at 7:30pm
Wednesday, October 23 at 7:30pm

In our inaugural reading, THE WITCH OF EDMONTON is presented alongside Jen Silverman’s WITCH, a modern re-telling of the same story.

“The Witch of Edmonton has received considerable attention recently both from scholars and critics interested in witchcraft practices and also from the directors in the theatre. The play, based on a sensational witchcraft trial of 1621, presents Mother Sawyer and her local community in the grip of a witch-mania reflecting popular belief and superstition of the time.”

Readers for this event include Company Members Tootie Van Reenan and Allison McCall, joined by Guest Artists Jeff Ruel, George Sopko, Brooke Bolduc, and Tom Haushalter.