MURDERED DARLINGS to Bring Deleted Scenes to Philly Fringe Festival
Eliza Carson, Grayce Carson, Marcia Ferguson, Sara Quagliata, Simi Toledano and Paige Zubel will perform at Deep End Studios.
On September 26, Philadelphia-based feminist theatre company Paper Doll Ensemble is digging up nearly a decade of deleted scenes, abandoned songs, bizarre characters, and theatrical experiments for MURDERED DARLINGS, a one-night-only performance at Deep End Studios as part of the 2026 Philadelphia Fringe Festival.
Since 2017, Paper Doll Ensemble has created original theatrical work through an often chaotic, deeply collaborative process of experimentation, improvisation, and play. Along the way, the ensemble has generated dozens of scenes, songs, characters, and concepts they loved, but that, for one reason or another, never made it into the final productions. In theatre, it's called “killing your darlings.” Now, they're resurrecting them.
The resurrection also brings some familiar faces back into the fold. Eliza Carson, Grayce Carson, Marcia Ferguson, Sara Quagliata, Simi Toledano, and Paige Zubel will perform the evening's unearthed material, with some reprising roles they originated and others stepping into someone else's shoes.
Murdered Darlings transforms Paper Doll Ensemble's creative graveyard into a theatrical séance, summoning material from the cutting room floors of the company's past productions and giving it an audience, in most cases, for the very first time.
Expect an eclectic collection of abandoned curiosities including “Blood in a Box,” a commercial selling unethically sourced blood for all of your ritual needs, a scene from inside one woman's colon, and a lifesize stuffed bear.
Together, they offer a rare glimpse inside the devising process and the strange evolutionary paths theatrical ideas take before a finished production ever reaches the stage. These are the experiments, detours, discoveries, and delightful disasters that helped shape Paper Doll Ensemble's work over the last nine years.
"As an ensemble, our devising process is built on endless experimentation," says Paper Doll Ensemble Artistic Director Sara Quagliata. "We improvise, play, and create our way toward the heart of what we ultimately want to say with each production. Along the way, we uncover countless moments that we love, but not every brilliant scene belongs in the final show. We never truly abandon these pieces because sometimes the scene that didn't fit one show becomes the missing puzzle piece in another. This one-night-only performance celebrates those wonderfully wayward creations that never found a home in one of our full-length productions, but that we simply couldn't bear to leave behind."
Whether hilarious, haunting, heartfelt, or completely unhinged, each resurrected darling carries the DNA of the stories the ensemble ultimately created.
On September 26, for one night only, those ghosts return. And after that? They may never be seen or heard from again.
Performance Details:
Saturday, September 26, 2026 at 7:00 PM
Deep End Studios
1313 S. 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA
Run time: 60 minutes
Cost: Pay-What-You-Can options starting at $5
Ages 18+
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