Tea Theatre Extended to June

To inaugurate its 10th anniversary season, Stolen Chair has partnered with Lady Mendl's Tea Salon to offer a unique theatrical experience, "tea theatre." Stolen Chair will pair its 15th original work, The Bachelors' Tea Party, with a classic 5-course tea service. Written by Stolen Chair's resident playwright, Kiran Rikhye, and directed by Jon Stancato, "one of the most daring and imaginative directors of his generation" (Martin Denton, NYtheatre.com), the play is open to the press on April 15 (5pm). Stolen Chair veteran Liz Eckert (Stage Kiss and Kinderspiel) is joined onstage by Jody Flader (The Vineyard Theater's Slug Bearers of Kayrol Island).

The Bachelors' Tea Party is an absurd and absurdly intimate new comedy inspired by the relationships of Elsie de Wolfe (Lady Mendl) and Bessie Marbury, who referred to themselves as "The Bachelors," after they took up joint residence sans men in the first years of the 20th century, press notes state. Before she invented the profession of interior decorator, de Wolfe was a struggling Broadway performer, known more for her costumes than her acting, and her partner Bessie Marbury, legendary agent and broker, was introducing America to Oscar Wilde and discovering Cole Porter. In a playfully perverse take on a young girl's imaginary tea party, de Wolfe and Marbury will delight and torment each other and entertain a coterie of special guests, "performed" by dolls assembled around the table, with audience members seated only inches away.

Since opening, Lady Mendl's Tea Salon has been consistently rated the best and most romantic Tea Salon in New York City. Guests enjoy a five-course tea, consisting of a variety of classic finger sandwiches, fresh baked scones with clotted cream and jams, and a large selection of fine teas. The Victorian style architecture and furnishings recreate a time of sublime elegance. Guests can easily envision Edith Wharton or Elsie de Wolfe entertaining friends at the turn of the century.

Named New York Press' best "genre-bending theatre," Stolen Chair is a theatre laboratory dedicated to the creation of playfully intellectual, wickedly irreverent, and exuberantly athletic original works. Proudly plundering the pop culture of the past half millennium, Stolen Chair's aesthetically promiscuous work recycles and reinvents old genres and stories to discover new ways to challenge and delight contemporary audiences. Pioneer of the Community Supported Theatre movement, Stolen Chair is supported, in part, by the Nancy Quinn Fund and by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts. To find out more about the company, please browse its press packet.

Performances at: Lady Mendl's Tea Salon, 56 Irving Place (Betw. 17th & 18th St)
4, 5, 6, N, Q, R, and L at Union Square
Tickets: $10 performance with $35 required tea service plus tax and tip
@ www.stolenchair.org or 212-410-2830
Every Sunday at 5pm beginning April 8.
Capacity is extremely limited, reservations are strongly recommended.