Folding Chair Classical Theatre Presents KISSING THE WITCH, 10/4-28

Folding Chair Classical Theatre presents this collection of old tales in new skins, with four actors playing multiple parts and original music performed live, on stage.

Five tales are unspun from the deeply familiar, and woven anew into a collection of fairy tales that wind back through time. Acclaimed Irish author Emma Donoghue reveals heroines young and old in unexpected alliances--sometimes treacherous, sometimes erotic, but always courageous. Told with luminous voices that shimmer with sensuality and truth, these age-old characters shed their antiquated cloaks to travel a seductive new landscape, radiantly transformed. Beauty discovers the Beast behind the mask is not so very different from the face she sees in the mirror; a fishergirl trades her voice for the man of her dreams, only to learn that some dreams are nightmares; a pauper trades places with a princess, finding the crown weighs heavily on her head. In these fairy tales, women young and old tell their own stories of love and hate, honor and revenge, passion and deception. Using the intricate patterns and oral rhythms of traditional fairy tales, Emma Donoghue wraps age-old characters in a dazzling new skin.

Born in Dublin in 1969, Emma Donoghue is an award-winning writer, living in Canada with her family. Her novels include "Room", which was shortlisted for the 2011 Man Booker and Orange Prizes and Governor General's Award, and won the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and Commonwealth Writers' Prize (Caribbean and Canada).

Her other writings include novels "The Sealed Letter", "Landing", "Life Mask", "Slammerkin", "Hood", and "Stir-fry"; short-story collections "Astray" (Autumn 2012), "Three and a Half Deaths" (UK ebook), "Touchy Subjects", "The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits", and "Kissing the Witch," a collection she later adapted for the stage. Her literary histories include "Inseparable", "We Are Michael Field", and "Passions Between Women" as well as two anthologies that span the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. She writes plays for radio and stage; "The Talk of the Town", about Irish writer Maeve Brennan at the NEW YORKER in the 1950s, gets its world premiere at the Dublin Theatre Festival this fall.

Folding Chair Classical Theatre brings "Kissing the Witch" to life with its signature fast-paced, minimalist style that strips the play down to its raw essence. We invite you to join us.

The play features Charlotte Patton* ("delightful and charming" -- Rex Reed), Ben Williams* ("[who gave] one of the most upsetting, honest, jaw-droppingly raw moments of theater I’ve ever seen." -- from "The Happiest Medium's" reviewing "Songs of a Theatrical Mixtape"), Folding Chair veteran Lisa Blankenship ([who] rings completely true and her tale towards the end is haunting in every sense." -- from "NYTheatre.com's" review of "The Weir"), and newcomer Mary Fuller. The play is directed by Marcus Geduld ("I love the way he stages, and his whole idea of theatre." -- Austin Pendleton on Marcus's production of "Titus Andronicus") with original music composed and performed by Ben Williams.

Tickets available online: http://www.smarttix.com/show.aspx?showcode=KIS2 or call SmartTix
at 212-868-4444.