RAT Shumka Theatre Company - New Production

[Tkpshumka@aol.com]

Dear RATS:

- Camus: "There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is 
suicide"

- Nietzsche: "The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it 
one gets
successfully through many a  bad night"

Shumka Theatre Company & The Downstairs Series at the 
Ontological-Hysteric Theater Present

Gun in Mouth, Pen in Hand
Suicides and the Messages Left Behind

Conceived and Directed by Tanya Kane-Parry
Based on Marc Etkind's book …Or Not To Be: A Collection of Suicide Notes

Performers: Erin Eagar, Karen Grenke, Andrew Hurley, Victoria Lind, David 
Vining, Damaris Webb. Performances Saturday May 15 and Sunday May 16 at 11 
PM, St. Mark's Church In-the-Bowery, 131 East 10th St at 2nd Ave. Tkts: $5. 
Resv: (212) 420-1916.

Is it love? Money? Drugs? Depression? Mental illness? What fears and 
obsessions drive one to commit the ultimate act of self-destruction? The 
suicide note is the first place we look to peek into the mind at its final 
moment.  Through the messages and works of Virginia Woolf, John Berryman, 
Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Cesare Pavese, and actress Lupe Velez, this play 
looks at the tortured lives of these artists and their immense impact on the 
world through their art, despite suffering terribly within the privacy of 
their own hells. While the psychiatric community ignores the force of their 
works, and instead reduces this group to neurotic perverts, these artists' 
thoughts and fears in their last fleeting seconds reveal the true nature of 
suicide: its not glamorous or romantic, but rather, messy and sad. 

Hope to see some RATS there!

Tanya Kane-Parry
Shumka Theatre Company
NYC