Our Mission
Artistic Director Beata Pilch founded Trap Door with a commitment to seeking out challenging yet obscure works and bringing them to life. Whether it is a European classic rarely seen in the United States, an untarnished piece of American literature, or the playwright living next door, Trap Door will find these voices and present them to the public through innovative expression. We utilize old traditions mixed with the new to illustrate the absurdities of living in today’s society. Founded in 1990, Trap Door began as a nomadic troupe, thrilling the European theaters of Stockholm, Berlin, Zakopane and Paris with its grass roots, avant-garde expressionism. It was on these stages that our trademark style of myth, ritual and revolution first crystallized. In March of 1994, Trap Door brought the stagecoach home to America, along with the exotic sensibilities that it had developed on its low budget, international tours.
Our History
Incorporated in March of 1994, Trap Door Theatre took their three-year tradition of touring European Theatres and Festivals and transferred it to Chicago’s world-renowned Off-Loop Theatre scene. Residing in its permanent home, a 60-seat, 900 square foot converted performance space in Bucktown, Trap Door has presented over seventy productions. Now on the cusp of their 15th season, this groundbreaking group continues to win the praise of critics and patrons catapulting a whirlwind of activity, keeping the doors open year round.
The first few years lead the young theatre and its ensemble members to accomplishments and growth unexpected for such a fledgling company. For thirteen successful seasons, our work has earned us multiple awards, crammed our house to the gills and more than doubled our company membership. Laurels came in droves from The Saints, The Illinois Arts Council, The Mayer & Morris Kaplan Foundation, The Richard Driehaus Foundation, The Alphawood Foundation, The Bucktown Community Organization, The French Embassy, Governor Jim Thompson, private businesses and The Joseph Jefferson Committee. Chicago Sun Times journalist Lucia Mauro designated Trap Door the best avant-garde theater in the city, and in 1996 Trap Door earned its first Jeff nomination for co-founder Sean Marlow as Best Actor for his powerhouse role in Jean Genet’s The Maids. Chief critic Albert Williams called it, “the kind of reckless, impractical, edgily energetic production that established Chicago theatre as a force to be reckoned with a generation ago–and that marks Trap door as a significant troupe for today.”
Selling out and standing high on the Chicago Reader, New City, and Chicago Tribune‘s recommended lists, Trap Door’s productions brought our dynamic ensemble hosts of local investors and the following merits from critic, Chris Jones: “Trap Door demonstrates its nerve and competence in work few others would dare perform.” In 1998, Trap Door went back to its Eastern European roots with Polish absurdist classic The Mother. Capping off that dream season was our Jeff Nominated Alien Hand, a live-wire adaptation of Moss Hart’s old Broadway musical Lady in the Dark. Chicago Reader‘s Chief Critic, Albert Williams, wrote that Alien Hand “affirms Trap Door’s place at the forefront of the Chicago fringe theater scene.” Such extensive credits have indeed made Trap Door the vanguard of the alternative arts in Chicago.
Our fifth season was an even greater success. Noted Steppenwolf director Sheldon Patinkin joined forces with Trap Door to direct the production of Eugene Ionesco’s The Killing Game. It was also a main showpiece in the Chicago Cultural Center’s Bastille Day Festival. Patrick Meyer’s Feedlot went on to win an After Dark Award for Best Ensemble. “Trap Door is known for attacking complex, subversive works with gusto, and this production only adds to that reputation.” Nick Green, The Chicago Reader.
Never have we had such a successful season opener as our sixth season’s production of Lebensraum by Israel Horowitz. Gay Chicago hailed it as “our finest work to date and one of the year’s very best”. As a result, Lebensraum had a lucrative, sold-out run and won three Jeff awards for Best Supporting Actor, Actress and Ensemble.
The 2001/2002 season brought in scores of reviews, allowing Trap Door to work with some of the best artist’s in Chicago. We took a step back in time and brought Bertolt Brecht’s Baal to bear on the self-destruction of the modern artist. German director, Stefan Brun, founder of Chicago’s Prop Theater, plied his talents on our stage as an Epic Theater specialist and member of the Berliner Ensemble, the world’s foremost theater for Brecht. Trap Door then went on to become the proud recipient of a Joseph Jefferson award for Best Ensemble for Chay Yew’s Porcelain. Standing tall on all of the city’s highly recommended lists, Trap Door wrapped up the season with its sold-out summer hit, The Automobile Graveyard by Fernando Arrabal. “Trap Door has carved a niche reviving the European avant-garde and reviving it quite well.” Chris Jones, The Chicago Tribune.
Trap Door opened its eighth season with Stanislaw Witkiewicz’s The Shoemakers. Due to popular demand, this production enjoyed an extended and sold out run. Trap Door then ventured on to do Doug Wright’s Quills, directed by Trap Door’s very own artistic director, Beata Pilch. This long-awaited Midwest Premier made Trap Door reach new heights in their artistic growth and the response was so overwhelming, that Trap Door extended the production and played to sold-out houses. “Beata Pilch’s Trap Door production is the most visually interesting and creative show at this theater in quite some time…the show is intense, lively, fast-paced and never dull.” Chris Jones, The Chicago Tribune. Trap Door continued its success with Fernando Arrabal’s, The Architect and the Emperor of Assyria. The Cultural Services of the French Embassy awarded Trap Door first prize for this complex, multi-media production.
Trap Door’s ninth season was their most successful to date and brought upon an onslaught of accomplishments and recognition ranging from winning awards to global exposure. Trap Door started out their season with Jean Paul Sartre’s, The Flies, a modern interpretation of the Orestia, earning Trap Door its’ first Jeff Recommendation for the year. Then the Trap Door set out to reach their greatest artistic endeavor to date with the American premiere of Emile Zola’s, Nana, earning rave reviews and a Jeff Award for Best Ensemble, playing to consistent sold-out houses, attracting prestigious theatre aficionados, and creating exposure on a grand scale. “…ingenious staging…. electrifying…. intoxicating… harrowing”, Justin Hayford, The Chicago Reader. Our season kept growing with Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Katzelmacher, which explores how xenophobia infiltrates an already crippling small town mentality. Katzelmacher sold out and was awarded Best Ensemble of 2002 from Windy City Times. “The laudably fast-paced and provocative production of Katzelmacher directed with nerve and verve by Beata Pilch and Krishna LeFan, is the best Fassbinder outing to date,” Chris Jones, The Chicago Tribune.
Trap Door took its 10th year off to rehabilitate its performance space to include a larger and more comfortable seating area, a spacious and elegant lobby area and a gorgeous new bathroom. The grand reopening of Trap Door’s 11th season began with our hugely successful hit, Garden of Delights by Fernando Arrabal; the production left our patrons hungry for more. Next at the Trap, Steppenwolf ensemble member and award winning playwright Tracy Letts directed the American premiere of Werner Schwab’s People Annihilation or My Liver is Senseless. 2005 concluded with the sold-out hit AmeriKafka directed by Kate Hendrickson with K.K. Dodd’s performance ranked in Chris Jones’ “Top 10 performances of 2005”.
Upon its 11th season, Trap Door opened with Witkiewicz’ The Crazy Locomotive which enjoyed a month run in Chicago before playing in the New York International Fringe Festival. Matei Visniec’s Old Clown Wanted then had its Midwest premiere at the Trap before a blockbuster run in New York at the HERE Alternative Arts Center for the ACT FRENCH festival. The Midwest Premiere of Janusz Glowacki’s The Fourth Sister, stated by the Chicago Tribune as one of the “Top 5 Shows of 2006”, sold out during the cold winter months. We ended our season with Franz Xavier Kroetz’ Request Programme winning Performink’s “End of Year Round-Up” for best performance by Carolyn Shoemaker and best production. Trap Door continues to fundraise each year to take a company of actors to Europe to visit festivals, theatres, and meet other artists in search of the same quest.
In its 12th year, Trap Door Theatre had the extreme pleasure and success of illuminating the provocative genius of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s The Bitter Tears of Petra Van Kant open our 2006 season. His mastery of re-defining gender roles with shear and subversive eloquence was revealed to a rapt audience thanks to directors Pilch and Krishna Lefan who reinvented this classic on the Trap Door stage with a design team and cast who was infused with incomparable talent and intelligence. – Venus Zarris, Gay Chicago Magazine. The production triumphed at Gay Chicago Magazine’s After Dark Awards, taking home “Best Ensemble”, “Best Costumes” and “Best Performance”. Inspired by our strong collection of talented female company members, Trap Door brought to life Susan Sontag’s Alice in Bed. The production was extremely popular and sold out continuously, particularly with various women’s groups throughout the city. Tapping into theatre’s diverse roots, equal parts surrealism and mythic Greek fantasy, Trap Door’s production of The Swan, by Elizabeth Egloff, used potent symbolism to retell a modern day Cinderella story. John Kahara, a long time member of Trap Door, was Jeff nominated for his extraordinary portrayal of a swan that transforms into a man. The highlight of the season was our four-city Romanian Tour taking with us the productions Old Clown Wanted by Matei Visniec, Stanislaw Witkiewicz’s The Crazy Locomotive and M.S. Garvey’s musical and poetic documentation of communicating with George Bush by mail in Letters to the President. In the future, Trap Door hopes to continue to collaborate with foreign artists and participate in European festivals, bringing their work abroad and exposing it on an international level.
Our 13th began with an intense focus on women of political power highlighting Trap Door’s talented company while regaling famed female figures who have played a part in history’s leadership, revolution, and artistic evolution. Trap Door Theatre’s interpretation of “Emma,” Howard Zinn’s portrayal of a captivating radical, succeeds phenomenally in the company’s mission statement of bringing life to difficult stage text…. Vibrant, even electrifying acting across the board, with a particularly dazzling Beata Pilch as Emma.- Monica Westin, Newcity Chicago. Emma was listed among Gay Chicago Magazine’s “Best of Stage” commemorating great theatre moments of 2007 and nominated for a Joseph Jefferson award. We then tackled Copi’s demanding script (Eva Peron) with mischievous grace (Justin Hayford of the Chicago Reader) noting a gutter-regal central performance by Holly Thomas as Eva – Time Out. Eva Peron appropriately won Newcity Chicago’s award for “Top Five Guilty Pleasures of 2007”. Our female finale, Beholder by Ken Prestininzi, was described as A protofeminist tale that also delves deeply into the push-pull of an artist’s psyche — poetic, emotionally fraught and unresolved as the lives of its fascinating (and perfectly neurotic) characters. With Kate Hendrickson directing, the production [was] as beautiful and richly haunted as a Modersohn-Becker painting. – Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun Times. Beholder was extremely well received by critics with a total of eight out of eight glowing reviews and won Gay Chicago Magazine’s “After Dark Award” for “Incidental Music”. This year we also undertook a new genre, Opera! As the reliable purveyor of opaque and often-scabrous European avant garde work, we dipped our toes into crowd-pleasing waters by importing “The Beastly Bombing,” a light-hearted musical homage to hatred created by librettist Julien Nitzberg and composer Roger Neill- Kerry Ried, The Chicago Tribune.
Year 14 was emblazoned with challenge and triumph! Trap Door Theatre’s company and audience celebrated the “impossibly entertaining production” (Monica Westin, Newcity Chicago) of Fabrice Melquiot’s No Darkness Round My Stone, made possible by the generous recognition of the French American Cultural Exchange’s (F.A.C.E.) prestigious Étant donnés award. Locally, No Darkens Round My Stone was recommended in Newcity Chicago’s Top Five Productions and was highly recommended by the Chicago Tribune, TimeOut Chicago, The Chicago Reader and Windy City Times. Nationally, the production was an Arts highlight in The Week magazine, representing the best of the U.S. and international media. Next came Torben Betts’ The Unconquered, a fast-moving satirical portrait of patriarchy and political indolence. Thanks to a generous grant from the Cultural Services of the Romanian Embassy, Trap Door brought to Chicago the popular Romanian director Radu Alexandru-Nica to command the vision of Horses at the Window. The show went on to tour Romania, performing at the National Theatre in Bucharest and the International Theatre Festival in Sibiu. In Sibiu Trap performed in a 12th century fortress atop a peak at the base of the Carpathian Mountains in the village of Cisnadiora; the venue was designed to hold around 70 people, but Trap Door set a record and packed in over 200 people into the ancient walls! Michael Garvey, Trap Door’s long time artistic partner, came along and showcased his latest political piece, Hope Manifestos, at the Fun-Underground Festival in Arad. While Trap Door was making marks abroad with Horses at the Window, their production of Dorota Maslowska’s A Couple of Poor, Polish Speaking Romanians brought in a barrage of audience and praise. The play explores both the interior mind and external struggle of the characters to adapt to their situation, expressing a Well-done contemporary distillation of existential angst, spiritual malaise and vague threat (Jonathan Abarbanel, Windy City Media Group).
Trap Door Theatre has hoarded the scripts from our planned 2010 season for many years. Almost all are distinguished as either U.S. or Midwest premieres. In honor of our 15th anniversary, these works will finally be realized on the stage. Each selection represents strongly Trap Door’s obsession with bringing obscure plays from Europe home to Chicago and exemplifies our unique flare to tangibly interpret challenging texts. Trap Door will re-unite with our most fêted peers and cultural organizations to mastermind Heiner Muller’s infamous epic of the collapse of Communism in East Germany, Hamletmachine. Notable participants include The Geothe Institute to facilitate collaboration with German set designers and Dr. Sean Griffin, master avant-garde composer and fellow Cal-Arts alumni to help construct the production’s auditory elements with a completely original score. Trap Door hopes that bringing these concepts to the stage will inspire discourse and remind people that one is not alone in his or hers feelings of uncertainty concerning the surrounding world.
