Son of Semele to Premiere Sheila Callaghan's ROADKILL CONFIDENTIAL June 8

Award-winning theatre company, Son of Semele Ensemble (SOSE), will present the West Coast premiere of Sheila Callaghan's Roadkill Confidential: A Noir-ish Meditation On Brutality, opening June 8 at the Son of Semele Theater in Silver Lake. This biting satire about the connection between voyeurism, sadism, and paranoia is a hilarious and exhilarating mash-up of styles and genres.

Artist, Trevor Pratt has gained fame and a cult-like following by creating brutal works of art. Living in up-state New York with her former art professor and step-son, Trevor is obsessed with the violence on TV. After hearing a local news story, she decides to incorporate potentially lethal roadkill into her new work. Soon those around her begin to die and an FBI agent is called in to investigate, but his increasing infatuation with Trevor and her work just might be leading the agent to commit his own act of violence.

Roadkill Confidential uses art, video and live performance to reveal the loneliness and desperation beneath our fame and media obsessed culture. The play premiered at 3LD in September 2010 by Clubbed Thumb, an OBIE award-winning company that commissions, develops, and produces funny, strange, and provocative new plays by living American writers.

Sheila Callaghan is the author of 22 plays including Dead City; Lascivious Something; Kate Crackernuts; That Pretty Pretty: or, The Rape Play; Fever/Dream; Crumble (Lay Me Down, Justin Timberlake); and We Are these Hands. Callaghan?s work has been produced and developed at Soho Rep, Playwright's Horizons, South Coast Repertory, Actor's Theatre of Louisville, New Georges and Woolly Mammoth among others. She was a writer for the Showtime series United States of Tara, and is the recipient of the Princess Grace Award for emerging artists, the Susan Smith Blackburn Award, and the prestigious Whiting Award.

Roadkill Confidential will be directed by SOSE ensemble member, Barbara Kallir, who has also directed the SOSE productions of Slaughter City by Naomi Wallace, The Tower by Matthew Maguire, and Melancholy Play by Sarah Ruhl, as well as Lisa Dillman's Half of Plenty for Rogue Machine. The cast features Son of Semele Ensemble members Melina Bielefelt, Daniel Getzoff, Melissa Randel, Alex Smith and Alexander Wells. The set is co-designed by Adam Hunter and Barbara Kallir, with video by Adam Flemming, sound by Joseph 'Sloe' Slawinski, lighting by Ian Garrett, costumes by Vicki Anne Hales-Daly and movement direction by Melina Bielefelt. The production features original roadkill artwork by Travis Novak.

Performances of Roadkill Confidential begin June 8, playing Friday and Saturday nights at 8:00 p.m. and Sunday afternoons at 5:00 p.m. One theatre community performance will be offered on Monday, June 24 at 7:00 p.m. Admission ranges from $18-20. Discounted group tickets are available for groups of 6 or more. Unsold seats at the time of curtain will be sold to local residents of zip codes 90004 and 90026 for $5.00 (I.D. required). Tickets are available through the SOSE website at www.sonofsemele.org. The box office opens one half hour prior to curtain. Son of Semele Theater is located in Silver Lake at 3301 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90004 (one mile west of Alvarado). For more information visit www.sonofsemele.org.

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