Shows
NIPPLEJESUS by Nick Hornby - Postponed. New dates TBC
"He doesn't know anything about art. But being a former bouncer, Dave gets hired to guard a controversial piece of art. “Jesus on the Cross” is ten feet high by six feet wide and was created in, well, let’s say, a different sort of way... There are people out there who won't like it, and there are many ways of looking at it. While Dave develops his own relation to art and this particular piece, he begins defending it against his wife, the media and a whole bunch of religious fanatics. Then the shit hits the fan. In the end, his troubles come from an unexpected side..."
Director - Michael Schäfer
Dave - Owen Lindsay
BREADCRUMBS by Jennifer Haley - Feb 2020
"A reclusive fiction writer diagnosed with dementia must depend upon a troubled young caretaker to complete her autobiography. In a symbiotic battle of wills, they delve into the dark woods of the past, unearthing a tragedy that shatters their notions of language, loneliness, and essential self."
Director - Samantha Ward
Alida - Ilya Parenteau
Beth/Mother - Rosie Thorpe
Set Design - Angela Lorenz
Costume - Emily Rosenberg
Film Production / postproduction - Alexander Lorenz and Mindnapped GmbH
This project is sponsored by das Kulturamt der Landeshauptstadt Düsseldorf
Charles Dickens' A CHRISTMAS CAROL - December 2019
Guest show presented by Neil McGarry, produced by ETD.
It was the night before Christmas...19th century wintery Victorian London. "Bah humbug!" rumbles the gloomy businessman, Ebenezer Scrooge, as his writer, Bob Cratchit, asks him for a day off for Christmas. Scrooge has no time for celebrating. When he leaves, it is only to count money in his cold apartment. That is all he asks of life. Until, on the night before Christmas, the ghost of Marley, his late partner in business, appears to him. The ghost announces the visit of three more ghosts who will take the misanthropist Scrooge into his Christmas past, present and future: a macabre lesson that will not fail to have an effect...
Performance - Neil McGarry
Mike & Aydin's NORTH-SOUTH DIVIDE - Nov/Dec 2019
Guest show presented by Mike & Aydin, produced by ETD.
Award-winning Germany-based, cutting-edge comedy duo Mike McAlpine and Aydin Isik wrote and perform this fast-paced Cabaret-style play, with which they first appeared at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2015.
They adapt the usual British idea of the North-South divide (London and the South-East versus the rest of us!) to a European setting.
A Brit and a Turk, a dissimilar pairing, playfully discuss the pros and cons of a modern Europe with all its clichés, prejudices and political incorrectness. Aydin's homeland wants in, Mike's wants out. Two opposites forming the perfect backdrop for a rip-roaring comedy.
Actor - Mike McAlpine
Actor - Aydin Isik
Agatha Christie's THE MOUSETRAP - Oct/Nov 2019
A group of strangers is stranded in a boarding house during a snow storm, one of whom is a murderer. The suspects include the newly married couple who run the house, and the suspicions in their minds nearly wreck their perfect marriage. Others are a spinster with a curious background, an architect who seems better equipped to be a chef, a retired Army major, a strange little man who claims his car has overturned in a drift, and a jurist who makes life miserable for everyone. Into their midst comes a policeman, traveling on skis. He no sooner arrives, when the jurist is killed. Two down, and one to go. To get to the rationale of the murderer's pattern, the policeman probes the background of everyone present, and rattles a lot of skeletons....!
Director - Ilya Parenteau
Mollie Ralston - Rosie Thorpe
Giles Ralston - Mike McAlpine
Sergeant Trotter - Devon Nickel
Christopher Wren - James M.Atkins
Miss Casewell - Anaïs Dahl
Mr Paravicini - Tom Zahner
Mrs Boyle - Sue Bonney-Cox
Major Metcalf - Roger Reade
Voice on the Radio - Tony Dunham
Stage Manager - Claudia Agster
Costume - Liz Manning
Marketing - Erika Levy
Edward Albee's THE ZOO STORY - March 2019
Peter, an average American, to escape his wife, two daughters and two parakeets sits on a bench in Central Park, reading and thinking. He is confronted by Jerry, a lonely man from the wrong side of the park, who tries to teach Peter the realities of life which Peter has tried to ignore. Through a serious of failed conversations and misinterpretations, Jerry begins an experiment to see if middle class Americans are animals after all....
Director - Ilya Parenteau
Jerry - Oleg Karpenko
Peter - Tom Zahner
Set Design - Angela Lorenz
Costume - Liz Manning
THE ODD COUPLE by Neil Simon - December 2018 / January 2019
This classic comedy opens as a group of the guys assemble for cards in the apartment of divorced Oscar Madison. And if the mess is any indication, it's no wonder that his wife left him. Late to arrive is Felix Unger, who has just been separated from his wife. Fastidious, depressed, and none too tense, Felix seems suicidal, but as the action unfolds, Oscar becomes the one with murder on his mind when the clean freak and the slob ultimately decide to room together with hilarious results as The Odd Couple is born!
Director - Ilya Parenteau
Oscar Madison - Tom Zahner
Felix Ungar - Mike McAlpine
Speed - Japheth Myers
Murray - Malcolm Giles
Roy - James Bunyon
Vinnie - James M. Atkins
Gwendolyn Pigeon - Lara Schitto
Cecily Pigeon - Rosie Thorpe
Costume - Liz Manning
THE CHESS PLAYER by Richard McElvain - September 2018
Guest show presented by Richard McElvain, produced by ETD.
The Chess Player is based on the novella, “Schachnovelle” by Austrian author Stefan Zweig. It tells the story of a Viennese Jewish lawyer, Dr. B, imprisoned by the Nazis. Because his legal practice was in financial management for Austrian "old money", they are sure he "knows" things they want to find out, so instead of sending him to the death camps, they keep him in solitary confinement to break him down. Gradually descending into madness, he steals a book of famous chess games and staves off insanity by escaping into the games.
Beyond the story of survival, the production has a larger, meta-theatre frame in which Richard explores the idea of how life parallels the action of the play. How, like the doctor in solitary survives by entering an illusion, so do we in our lives reach out to illusions to guide us...like Theatre.
Richard performed the show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival last year and it received 5* STAR reviews!
…an absolute must see not only for entertainment purposes, but as a necessary piece of theatre. Broadway Baby *****
SOME GIRL(S) by Neil LaBute - April 2018
Your Career as a writer is blossoming, your beautiful, young fiancée is waiting to get married and rush off to Cancun by your side, so what is your natural reaction? Well if you’re a man, it’s probably to get nervous and start calling up old girlfriends.
And so begins a single man’s odyssey through four hotel rooms as he flies across the United States in search of the perfect woman (that he’s already broken up with!)
By turns humorous and serious, this portrait of the artist as a young seducer casts a truthful, hilarious light on a typical American male as he wanders through the heart of darkness that is himself…
Director - Ilya Parenteau
Man - Jan Frede
Sam - Rosie Thorpe
Tyler - Lara Schitto
Lindsay - Cigdem Spickermann
Bobbi - Priscilla Taylor
Costume - Liz Manning
Set Design - Miriam Möller
EDUCATING RITA by Willy Russell - January & March 2018
EDUCATING RITA follows the relationship between Rita, a young working-class hairdresser from Liverpool and Dr. Frank Bryant, a middle-aged University lecturer, during the course of a year.
Brash, straight-talking Rita bursts into University night classes determined to change her life. Her tutor Frank is a jaded lecturer, a failed poet and a self-acknowledged ‘appalling teacher of appalling students’ who has just about given up. In need of some extra cash, he agrees to tutor Rita, totally unaware of the whirlwind that’s about to enter his world….
Director - Ilya Parenteau
Rita - Rosie Thorpe
Frank - Mike McAlpine
Costume - Liz Manning