'Beholder', a play about painter Paula Modersohn-Becker

Featuring Betsy Zajko as Paula, with Jason Huysman, John Kahara, Judy Loyd, and Kristen Williams Smith

Beholder is inspired by the notebooks and letters of painter Paula Modersohn-Becker and her friend, poet Rainer Maria Rilke. The script also takes inspiration from Rilke's poem about Paula, entitled "Requiem for a Friend." A love story on many levels, Beholder explores how Paula's continually evolving relationship to her work is reflected in her relationship to herself and to the people in her life. A year after her death, Rilke sequestered himself in his room, and wrote the 259-line "Requiem for a Friend" as an outcry against her death, and a tribute to her greatness and vision as an artist. 

During her short career, Modersohn-Becker's art was hardly known, although she produced over four hundred paintings and at least a thousand drawings and graphic works. In art categories, she is hard to place. A rare individualist, she was a precursor to the German expressionist movement and a synthesizer of German and French sources. She described her own development as a move towards "great simplicity of form."    

Playwright Prestininzi and director Hendrickson have been collaborating for over 12 years. Together they form a director/playwright team of shared reverie, theatrical vision and the belief in the persuasion of intimacy and commitment.

Composer Alison Chesley / Lighting Designer Gina Patterson / Stage Manager Elizabeth Bruins  

Beholder opens Thursday, May 15, 2008 at 8 p.m. and will close Saturday, June 21, 2008 at 8p.m. 

Performances run  Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m.

Admission:    $20 (2-for-1 on Thursdays)

Trap Door Theatre is located at 1655 W. Cortland Ave.

For Information or reservations call 773-384-0494.  To purchase tickets online go to www.trapdoortheatre.com.
 

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