MURDER! CANNIBALISM! KIDS! TITUS ANDRONICUS JR. PREMIERES!

Table 8 Productions makes its Hollywood Fringe Festival debut with a twisted premiere: Titus Andronicus, Jr., written and directed by Creative Director Troy Heard, at the Sacred Fools Theater Second Stage, June 5th through 28th.
Mr. Benjamin, a recently divorced art teacher at upscale Dawson Middle School, is assigned the most unenviable task: to direct the Spring play! When he opts to mount Shakespeare’s bloodiest tragedy he gets caught in a darkly comic spiral as the students supplant the teacher and he learns the toughest lesson of them all…

Titus Andronicus Jr. originated two years ago when Heard staged A Very Merry Unauthorized Scientology Pageant with a cast of young children. “After Pageant, I had people coming up to me saying I should do Shakespeare with children, which didn’t really interest me. But I thought if only there were a gimmick…and that’s where the idea of doing Titus popped up. I took inspiration from the pageant scenes in The Addams Family movies.” But that still wasn’t enough for Heard.

“The framing concept of the teacher/director suffering a nervous breakdown developed about a year later. Who else would be insane enough to attempt to stage this show with a bunch of middle schoolers than a teacher at the end of his rope. So ‘Mr. Benjamin’ quickly became a major character and in some ways his descent into madness mirrors General Titus’s tragic decline,” says Heard.

The script was given a public reading as part of UNLV’s Organic and Homegrown Playwrights Festival in March and the response was overwhelmingly positive. Audiences expecting a quirky evening of children performing Shakespeare were instead given a darkly comic journey.

ABOUT TROY HEARD

Troy is Creative Director of Table 8 Productions and Producing Artistic Director of the Onyx Theatre, both based in Las Vegas, NV. He was selected Best Director of 2012 for his production of Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom by the Las Vegas Review-Journal and Desert Companion magazine, and in 2014 by Desert Companion for his multiple productions that season. Recent directorial credits include Heathers the Musical; Mr. Burns, a post-electric play; and Bring It On: The Musical. As playwright, his titles include Anton Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard of the Living Dead and Jonestown. Troy earned an MFA from Savannah College of Art and Design and is a proud associate of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society. For more information, visit www.troyheard.com.

ABOUT TABLE 8 PRODUCTIONS

Table 8 Productions was formed in 2007 to produce site specific and immersive theatre. Their productions include Jonestown, based on the FBI transcripts of the Guyana Tragedy; MOTEL, inspired by Schnitzler’s La Ronde that took audiences through a downtown Vegas motel; and a revised version of Roberto Athayde’s Miss Margarida’s Way sanctioned by the author. Table 8 is currently represented in Vegas by a new immersive production of Steven Peros’s jazz-era dramedy, The Cat’s Meow, playing at the Velveteen Rabbit cocktail lounge. For more information, visit www.table8lv.com.

PERFORMANCES:
Sunday, June 5 at 6:30 p.m.

Friday, June 10 at 7 p.m.

Saturday, June 11 at 11 p.m.

Sunday, June 12 at 7 p.m.

Friday, June 17 at 5 p.m.

Saturday, June 18 at 8 p.m.

LOCATION:

Sacred Fools Theater Second Stage – 6320 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90038

RUNNING TIME: 60 minutes

TICKETS: $12

Online tickets: http://hff16.org/3410

Tickets available online or at the door.