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.

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.

OCTOBER 16 & 23 - THE WITCH OF EDMONTON
William Rowley, Thomas Dekker, and John Ford

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.