Hardcover Theater

Mission

We used to have a conventional Mission Statement on this page. It was high-minded and boring. So now instead we're just going to tell you what we do.

Hardcover Theater creates shows based on literature. We write our own scripts for them - almost thirty so far. We specialize in working with texts that have never before been adapted for the theater.

We stage the unstageable. Twelve-foot-tall monsters with insect-like heads and an extra pair of forelimbs, for A Princess of Mars? No problem. A cavernous fortress inside a mountain and thousands of native guards, for She: Immortal Witch-Queen of a Lost World? Piece of cake. A human hand - only the hand, no body attached - for "The Beast with Five Fingers," from Weird Tales for Halloween? We could stage that with both hands tied behind our back.

We tell stories, and we tell them fast. A typical Hardcover show has the narrative momentum of a bullet train.

We "break the fourth wall." Our actors don't pretend the audience isn't there. They talk to the audience; they use movement and gesture to help the audience imagine things; sometimes they even run out into the audience. We do this as a matter of principle. Every Hardcover show breaks the fourth wall. It's part of who we are as artists.

We use language carefully.