APPLETON, WIS. —The award-winning dark comedy “The Pillowman,” a tale of a writer whose grisly short stories seem to be mimicked in a series of real crimes, will be performed March 5-7 at Lawrence University.
The play will be staged March 5-6 at 8 p.m. and March 7 at 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. in Cloak Theatre of Lawrence’s Music-Drama Center, 420 E. College, Appleton. Tickets, at $10 for adults and $5 for students, are available through the Lawrence Box Office, 920-832-6749. Due to explicit language, violence, blood and dark subject matter, this production is not appropriate for children or the faint of heart.
Written in 2003 by Irish playwright Martin McDonagh, “The Pillowman” follows Katurian K. Katurian, who writes bizarre and violent fictional stories. When real crimes involving several child murders eerily similar to his stories occur, Katurian is arrested. His conversations with police interrogators slowly shed light on his creative inspiration, drawn from his family’s own horrifying experiences. No answer or story is quite what it seems, however, and the lines between reality and storytelling are erased.
“The Pillowman” premiered in 2003 at the London Royal National Theatre, earning the 2004 Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play. It made its Broadway debut at the Booth Theatre in 2005 and Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre the following year. It won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Foreign Play in 2005.
The production is the joint senior theatre project of students Alex Bunke, Cait Davis, Allie-Marie McGuire and Peter Welch.
“It’s a difficult production, with complex text and even more complex relationships,” said Welch, who is directing the show’s 15-member cast. “We’ve brought Katurian’s dark fairy tales to life with puppets and special effects and weave them into a world where reality and fantasy are one in the same. Be prepared.”
