BLOODY POETRY + (un)Staged Readings from CAIN, PROMETHEUS UNBOUND, and FRANKENSTEIN at The Sekrit Theater

INVULNERABLE NOTHINGS presents Howard Brenton's BLOODY POETRY in rep with (un)Staged Readings from Lord Byron’s CAIN, Percy Bysshe Shelley’s PROMETHEUS UNBOUND, and Mary Shelley’s FRANKENSTEIN. After a sold out residency at The Brooklyn Art Library in August 2016, the company will travel to The Sekrit Theater in Austin, TX for a 12 performance run in advance of the show's European tour. In Austin, the shows in rep are presented in a site specific staging in The Sekrit's glass and metal greenhouse and the surrounding grounds, with The Harry Ransom Center's premier manuscript collection from Byron and the Shelleys providing guiding production context and crucial research support.

ABOUT THE PRODUCTION:

BLOODY POETRY is a 1984 biographical play by Howard Brenton produced through special arrangement with Samuel French. The text concerns the wild historical dramas, both literary and personal, of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, and Claire Clairmont from the summer of 1816 until Shelley’s death in the summer of 1822. INVULNERABLE NOTHINGS’ highly interactive staging of Brenton’s play is designed for small audiences in intimate, nontraditional theatre spaces. BLOODY POETRY is matched in rep to an experimental reading series which features selections from Lord Byron’s CAIN and Shelley’s PROMETHEUS UNBOUND, closet dramas whose production is expressly forbidden by their authors. These (un)staged readings seek to preserve the unique formal qualities of the plays while involving their texts in a theatrically animating process: an ‘audience' gathers together to silently perform mental stagings of the playscripts, the works remaining unvoiced but communally accessible through text and original live music. BLOODY POETRY functions as a fully realised theatrical counterpoint to the (un)Staged Reading Series and explores these writers' living mythologies. CAIN and PROMETHEUS UNBOUND are joined by selections from Mary Shelley’s seminal novel FRANKENSTEIN at its 200th anniversary, alternatively presented with spoken selections performed by the cast and underscored with live music.

BLOODY POETRY is directed by Matthew Gasda with Melissa Nelson. Lighting is by Joseph Medeiros with Anthony Delluva. The environmental set design is by Beau Reichert, with sound design by Joe Reynolds and costume design by Melissa Nelson. The cast features Charlie Munn* as Percy Bysshe Shelley, Kristin Winters* as Mary Shelley, C.C. Kellogg as Claire Clairmont, Vincent Santvoord as George the Lord Byron, Nico Bonacci as Dr. William Polidori, and Lauren Guglielmello as Harriet Westbrook (*appearing courtesy of AEA). The (un)Staged Reading Series was conceived by C.C. Kellogg with the help of the cast and creative team.

Special thanks to Lindsea Bevington, Jacqueline Brockel, The Brooklyn Art Library, Fractured Atlas, The Harry Ransom Center, Claudia Johnson, Anya Klepikov, The Metier Foundation, The Morgan Library, Marissa Passi, Steven Peterman, Beau Reichert, Tate Rehklau, The Sekrit Theater, Jordan Tiberio, Tim Vasen, and Susan J. Wolfson.

ABOUT THE COMPANY:

INVULNERABLE NOTHINGS is a theatre collective and producing partnership committed to poetic language in performance, radically flat collaborative structures, the theatrical activation of research and library centres, and breakfast tacos.

www.invulnerablentohings.com