Upcoming Events
Clay McLeod Chapman’s ‘The Pumpkin Pie Show’ - Friday, February 13, 2009
Richmond’s favorite hometown playwright Clay McLeod Chapman is bringing his Pumpkin Pie Show back to The Firehouse for a limited engagement of three shows February 13-14, 2009. Fresh off their hugely successful international summer tour and a triumphant return to New York City to celebrate their 10th anniversary, The Pumpkin Pie Show will return to Richmond like you’ve never seen it before! Every story is chosen at random each night, so each show is guaranteed to be completely different from the last.
Feb. 13th at 8 p.m. Tickets $20 general/$10 students and ArtsCard holders.
About the Show:
“ . . . The age of the great horror stars is long past, but tucked away in a dark basement theater under the bustling street life of the East Village, an intense moon-faced artist is gleefully summoning some of those old ghosts . . . With the trembling voice of Vincent Price and the sinister presence of Boris Karloff, Clay McLeod Chapman - playwright and co-star of The Pumpkin Pie Show, a series of gripping, often unnerving short plays rooted in classic gothic literature - has been unsettling audiences with this evolving collection for a decade . . .
. . . On the surface, these are short, simple tales with O. Henry twists and scenes of normality invaded by sudden bursts of the bizarre and ghastly. But while the monstrous element in most horror stories inspires terror or disgust, the melancholy characters in Mr. Chapman’s portraits of ordinary people seem to find a salvation in the mysterious horrors of life . . .
. . . Mr. Chapman uses the macabre to explore the humanity of his characters and reveal an almost spiritual side to the horrific . . .”
- New York Times
About the Playwright:
Playwright and story-teller Clay McLeod Chapman has seen his short fiction transposed to the stage, produced in such various countries as Romania, Scotland, Ireland and here in the United States. Originator of the rigorous story-performance group, The Pumpkin Pie Show, Chapman has taken his writing to the 1997 Sibiu International Festival of Theatre, the New York International Fringe Festival (1997 and 1999), the 1998 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and Coney Island Fun Park. His first book of stories, rest area, was published by Hyperion. His play volume of smoke was commissioned by Firehouse Theatre Project where it received its hugely successful world premiere. It later enjoyed a sold-out run in New York City followed by a triumphant return to Richmond at Virginia Commonwealth University. Educated at North Carolina School of the Arts for Drama, the Burren College of Art, and Sarah Lawrence College, he now divides his time between Richmond, Virginia, and Brooklyn, New York.