The Audience

paper chairs excitedly announces, The Audience, a bold new adaptation of Federico Garcia Lorca’s, El Público, reimagined by Austin playwright and paper chairs’ co-founder Elizabeth Doss. Join them at the Austin Playhouse July 26th- August 11th, 2018 as paper chairs infuses Lorca’s unfinished play with pertinent details from his life and his murder.

paper chairs’ production of The Audience depicts the military coup in Spain in 1936, in which Lorca was captured and murdered in his hometown Granada. It draws on the Fascist takedown of a burgeoning republic that led to the poet/playwright’s assassination. This context illuminates the urgency and significance of Lorca’s most abstract and free-form play.

The Audience depicts a dangerous world where personal freedoms and self-expression can get you killed. It borrows facts from Lorca’s life, his artistic journey from the celebrated dramatist and theatre director of a proud nation to a bold and fearless artist determined uproot tradition and reclaim the theatrical form. But Lorca’s intentions collide with the rise of a repressive regime who takes him prisoner. Paper chairs’ adaptation of El Público runs with his themes of repressed sexuality and philosophical conundrums while offering the audience a human portrait of an iconic figure whose story speaks volumes to our present political climate.