suicide.chat.room: Only 4 shows left!

The snow that has knocked the Washington DC metro region for a loop has also cut down the number of performances of Taffety Punk Theatre Company's critical s/mash-up of music, text and dance: suicide.chat.room. There are only four (4) performances left at Flashpoint's Mead Theater Lab, starting tonight: Thursday, February 11 at 8 p.m. (The show will also run on Friday at 8 p.m. and on Saturday at 3 p.m. and 8 p.m.)

Obviously we think you should brave the weather and the Metro to see our work. But don't just take our word for it. The critical reception for suicide.chat.room has been extraordinary.

Here are a few examples:

Trey Graham, Washington City Paper:

You’ll have gathered, perhaps, that suicide.chat.room is designed to provoke debates and questions, not provide answers or prescribe solutions; it’s an impressionistic 50 minutes, an invitation to a necessary conversation, not a thesis about what we ought to do, assuming anything needs doing, about the shadowed realms it considers.

The synth-heavy score, by Chad Clark of the D.C. band Beauty Pill, and Paulina Guerrero’s choreography, developed in concert with the ensemble, are linked expressions, alternately lyrical and convulsive, of an agonizing way of being. The chat-room transcriptions, both sampled and spoken live, get phased and manipulated and distorted to the point that the speakers often can’t make themselves understood—which makes a certain painful sense as metaphor, even as it provides a perplexing, even distancing aesthetic experience.

In short, it’s not an easy place to be, this dark room where the ritual greeting goes “Welcome—sorry you’re here,” and where the people reach frantically out and then push one another away. It’s also, I suspect, not going to be an easy place to forget.

Peter Marks, The Washington Post:

The energetic evening is brought to you by Taffety Punk Theatre Company, a resourceful D.C. troupe that looks for ways to supplement the fairly conventional diet on which audiences here tend to be restricted. They've accomplished that with this original piece, which strives to achieve a physical language for the death wish. Think of the hour you spend in Flashpoint's Mead Theatre Lab as Martha Graham meets Jack Kevorkian.

Missy Frederick, DCist:

It all sounds a bit bizarre, but movement and dialogue interact with success in suicide.chat.room, which interweaves Paulina Guerrero's choreography with actual lines taken from such Internet sites. The dancing provides a compelling emotional illustration, effectively articulating the tortured subjects' feelings of imprisonment, their isolation, and their uneasy connections with their fellow chatters, with none of it ever feeling too literal. Eerie, pulsing music drives it all along, and the cast works more as an ensemble in service to the text than a collection of established characters.

Erin Trompeter, Express:

It's heavy stuff, but Taffety Punk tackles a forbidden subject with stark artistry.

Though we wish that we could extend and add more performances to make up for the whiteout, we just can't do it. So bundle up and trundle out to see us, will you? You can reserve tix (only $10) by emailing us at tix@taffetypunk.com or calling (202) 261 6612.