Frozen Sectionby Lisa D'Amour
Performances
Cast & Personnel
Director
Assistant Director
Cast
- Noel Bowers
- Raymond Compton
- Jeanne Harris
- Jovan Jackson
- Jeff Miller
- Rebecca Randall
- T Lavois Thiebaud
- Clarity Welch
- Abraham Zeus Zapata
Vocal Direction
Fight Choreography
Scenic Design
Costume Design
Lighting Design
Sound Design
Prop Design
Production Manager
Stage Manager
Deck Crew
Set Construction
The Play
A post-apocalyptic comedy with a side of existential dread
“Welcome to Tyler’s, where a stranger is just a friend waiting to happen.”
Come meet the idiosyncratic, delightfully panicked community who works and shops at Tyler’s, a grocery store at the edge of the world. The Baker knits in the breakroom, while the Butcher laments a time gone by. In the cold air pouring from an open freezer case, The Wife and Mother dreams of a life she failed to live. By the dumpster in the alley, the cashier communes with the coyote, vaping and laughing, baring bellies and swapping secrets. Tenderness resides here.
Do you, dear theatergoer, currently find yourself disoriented, disassociated, confused as to where to find “reality?” Do you yearn for less screen time, better dreams, and a fresh head of lettuce plucked from the ground? Then these are your people, this is your theatre.
In Frozen Section, an intentional community of shoppers and workers reckons with the recent arrival of a trickster coyote and supports their youngest, Sage, as they prepare to move on to a new city, a new life.
WORLD PREMIERE.
The relationship between The Catastrophic Theatre and celebrated playwright and die-hard Southerner Lisa D’Amour began when Catastrophic forerunner Infernal Bridegroom Productions commissioned and premiered her 2005 play Hide Town. Subsequently, Catastrophic produced her Anna Bella Eema in 2011 and Detroit (a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama) in 2014.
Written with Catastrophic and its ensemble front-of-mind, Frozen Section operates in the realm between awake and asleep, marrying conscious to unconscious. Like its writer, the play seems to be in a constant state of becoming. Like the character of the coyote trickster it has been, for us, an agent of generative chaos. Frozen Section seems to stand outside of time but is uniquely attuned to the world we occupy today. It arrived when we most needed a new one. Good timing.
As lights finally flicker then fade on our world we’ve known, our times call on us to build a new one, together. The community forged in Frozen Section provides us with a blueprint.
According to D’Amour, “It’s both liberating and an honor to return to work with the mad geniuses at Catastrophic Theatre. Catastrophic allows me to be the unrepressed and unruly playwright that I want to be, meaning Catastrophic lets me be my authentic self. Houston is so lucky to have this company that lets theater be joyful, full-bodied and WILD.”
