Beata Pilch

Trap Door credits

Acting
  • Occidental Express
  • How to Explain the History of Communism to Mental Patients
  • Sister Catherine / John Doe
  • Mother / the word progress on my mother’s lips doesn’t ring true
  • OVERWEIGHT, unimportant: MISSHAPE  — A European Tour
  • First Ladies
  • Mother / Me Too, I am Catherine Deneuve 
  • Mother / Horses at the Window 
  • Emma / Emma
  • The Crazy Locomotive (2005 in New York, Chicago, Romania)
  • People Annihilation
  • Katzelmacher
  • Nana
  • Quills
  • The Shoemakers 
  • Baal
  • Ten Tiny Fingers, Nine Tiny Toes
  • Crazy Locomotive (2000)
  • Pre Paradise, Sorry Now
  • Killing Game 
  • Mother / The Mother
  • Bremen Freedom 
  • Fever Dream Cocktail
  • Dad’s Ham
  • Troy Women
  • Blood on the Cat’s Neck (1996)
  • Orgasmo Adulto Escapes from the Zoo
  • The Gnadiges Fraulein
  • Aria Da Capo
  • Dr. Faustus
  • The Inevitable Crunch Factor
  • Ivona, Princess of Burgundia
  • Bird Bath
  • Dr. Grun / Mad Man and the Nun

Artistic Director

Artistic director Beata Pilch (she/her/hers) founded Trap Door Theatre in 1995. Originally from Chicago, she received a BFA in acting from the United States International University-San Diego and an MFA in acting from the California Institute of the Arts. Find more information about her and the history of the company here. 

Pilch’s favorite line from a Trap Door production:

Tornado Babelberg is my maiden name!”—The Shoemakers

Gallery

Intoxicating, Bewildering, Revelatory. Extraordinary Madness.

(The Architect and Emperor of Assyria) Justin Hayford, Chicago Reader

The most visually interesting and creative show in quite some time – Intense, lively, fast-paced and never dull.

(Quills) Chris Jones, The Chicago Tribune

Directors Beata Pilch and Sean Marlow have the style, as well as the viciously disturbing yet delicious imagery down. The cast brings Witkacy’s dead creatures to marvelous life.

Kate Zambreno, The New City Review about The Shoemakers

If I were asked to nominate the first ladies of the Chicago avant-garde – and I am using that term not to mean ambitious post-collegiates in storefronts but women with career-long commitments to difficult, disturbing, self-ameliorating theater  -I’d surely have Beata Pilch, the founder of the Trap Door Theatre

Kerry Reid, The Chicago Tribune

Credits (continued…)

Directing
  • 25/25 (festival)
  • They 
  • Vatzlav
  • Blood on the Cat’s Neck (2013)
  • The Unveiling and Dozens of Cousins
  • The Unconquered
  • Eva Peron
  • The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant
  • Request Program
  • The Fourth Sister
  • Crazy Locomotive 
  • Garden of Delights
  • Katzelmacher
  • Nana
  • The Architect and Emperor of Assyria 
  • Quills
  • The Shoemakers 
  • The Homosexual, Or The Difficulty of Sexpressing Oneself 
  • La Ronde
  • Crazy Locomotive (2000)
  • The Mother
  • Woman Behind Bars