CLYTIGATION #2 | Mar 6, 2015 | PERFORMANCES BETWEEN 3 - 5PM | ONLINE APPLICATION AVAILABLE BY 5PM FRI, FEB 27
In Clytigation #2  aka "The Libation Bearer” Ellsworth attempts to deliver what is required to escape the consequences of her bad choices. Because punishment is very difficult to avoid (especially in a 4’X4’X7’ box), “The Libation Bearer” will only be performed for three people who meet the criteria for redemption (one at time).

In The Evening, writer/director Richard Maxwell uses three actors, three musicians, and On the Boards' vast mainstage for a 50-minute exploration of familiar shapes and predictable patterns and what it feels like to break free. As a theater-maker, Maxwell is known in large part for his style, with actors blurting out their bursts of words in a manner that's part flat-affect/part reading-off-a-cuecard, and perfect for their resurrected-cliche personas.

About ten years ago, I saw one of Richard Maxwell’s plays at PS122 in New York. On the sidewalk after the show, I remember my inscrutable playwriting professor proclaiming that Maxwell was the “East Village David Mamet.” As a fan of Maxwell’s work, I was defensive and dismissed the observation as downtown, back-handed snark. However after seeing The Evening, I’m finally seeing the connection. The Evening plays like Brecht on Quaaludes directing a Mamet short.

The weight of the room is palpable when Beatrice begins telling a story that is clearly not her own. A story full of vivid images, from a Native American man walking into the kitchen unannounced to a struggle with a dying man and his catheter.  And when I say the room I mean, not the fictional place depicted on stage made of cardboard walls and utilitarian furniture, I mean the witnesses of the evening, the audience who bare the eternal burden of watching these actors pretending not to pretend.