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Run by Founding Artistic Directors Jenny McConnell Frederick & Randy Baker, Rorschach Theatre is a company that has received significant acclaim for its fierce performance style, its bold use of theatrical space and its dedication to challenging works that are at once relevant and timeless. The company’s work has focused on helping to reveal the contemporary relevance of fable, finding magic in rough spaces, connecting timeless works to a contemporary audience.

Rorschach Theatre has produced more than two dozen plays seen by more than 30,000 people in Washington area. They have been nominated for four Helen Hayes Awards, been a finalist for the Mayor’s Arts Award for Outstanding Emerging Artists and been the recipients of two Young Artists grants and two Artist Fellowship Grants from the DC Commission for the Art and Humanities. Rorschach Theatre won a Mary Goldwater award in 2006 and many Rorschach artists have won Mary Goldwater awards for their work with the company. The company’s work has garnered the attention of The New York Times, The Washington Post, American Theatre Magazine and National Public Radio, as well as countless local publications. The company has become, "proof that limited resources do not stymie great talents, any more than big budgets can squeeze works of genius from mediocre minds." (Washington Post)

Mission
Through uncommon uses of environment and intimate passionate performances, Rorschach Theatre seeks to lure its audiences beyond the limits of ordinary theatrical experience so that they may discover new elements of their own humanity.

History
Rorschach Theatre was founded in the summer of 1999 by four young Washington DC theatre artists, including the current Artistic Directors Randy Baker and Jenny McConnell Frederick as well as Set Designer Jordana Adelman and Director Jason Gots. Following the success of the company’s first production, Eugene O’Neil’s The Hairy Ape, the company quickly took something that could have been a detriment — the lack of a permanent performance space — and turned it into a major asset by seeking out non-traditional places to create theatre. In the company’s first three years performances took place in the glass-walled greenhouse on the roof of the former Hechinger Building in Tenleytown, Signal 66 Art Gallery — a former livery stable in Blagden Alley, the cavernous forgotten auditorium of Randall Junior High in Southwest DC and the beautiful art deco 16th Street Lobby of the DC Jewish Community Center.

As Rorschach Theatre’s directors, actors and designers strove to create productions that would compliment, enhance and interact with these remarkable spaces, a clear aesthetic began to evolve. The style that has resulted is one of powerful, kinetic performances and fantastically realized design elements, that seek to convince audiences that one does not go to the theatre out of obligation, rather out of a craving for exhilaration – to connect with something larger than oneself. Though Rorschach no longer performs in greenhouses, an important part of its mission remains the uncommon use of space, constantly challenging perspective and traditional notions of what a “stage” is, performing above, behind and very close in front of audiences. In 1999, the four artists that began Rorschach Theatre decided that theatre should be an event. As the company’s aesthetic and play choices continue to evolve, this idea remains true.

Recent Shows
The Minotaur

By Anna Ziegler

Directed by Randy Baker

A joint world premiere with Atlanta’s Synchronicity Theatre * “Love is bigger than flesh. All the stories confirm that.”

Past Seasons
2012 - 2013
 * A Maze: August 2012
 * The Gallerist: January 2012
 * After the Quake: October 2011

2011-2012
 * Voices Underwater: March 2011

2009 - 2010
 * Living Dead In Denmark: July 2009
 * Dead City: July 2009
 * Brainpeople: June 2009
 * 1001: May 2009

2007 - 2008
 * The Skin of Our Teeth: July 2008
 * Dream Sailors: July 2008
 * This Storm is What We Call Progress: June 2008
 * Kit Marlowe: October 2007

2006 - 2007
 * Birds: June 2007
 * References To Salvador Dali Make Me Hot: April 2007
 * Rough Magic: January 2007
 * Monster: October 2006

2005 - 2006
 * The Arabian Night: July 2006
 * A Bright Room Called Day: April 2006
 * Fair Ladies at a Game of Poem Cards: January 2006
 * The Beard of Avon: October 2005

2004 - 2005
 * Behold!: May 2005
 * The Scarlet Letter: February 2005
 * Accidental Death of an Anarchist: October 2004
 * A Tale of a Tiger: September 2004

2003-2004
 * After the Flood: January 2004
 * Master and Margarita: August 2003
 * Family Stories: A Slapstick Tragedy: April 2003

2002-2003
 * Ubu Roi: October 2002
 * A Clearing in the Woods: June 2002
 * Lord of the Flies: March 2002

2000-2001
 * JB: September 2001
 * The Illusion: June 2001
 * God of Vengeance: February 2001
 * Rhinoceros: October 2000

1999
 * The Hairy Ape: July 1999

Artistic Directors
Jenny McConnell Frederick is the co-Artistic Director of Rorschach Theatre. She founded the company in the summer of 1999 with Randy Baker. For Rorschach, she has directed Voices Underwater, Dead City, This Storm is What We Call Progress, Rough Magic, The Arabian Night, The Scarlet Letter, Master and Margarita, A Clearing in the Woods, The Illusion and the Helen Hayes nominated God of Vengeance. She has also directed at the Source Theatre Festival and at Virginia Commonwealth University. Jenny has produced dozens of plays, readings and special events for Rorschach Theatre. She’s a member of the Cultural Development Corporation’s Mead Theater Lab Advisory Panel and The Hub Theatre’s Advisory Board. She produced Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company’s Size Matters reading series for three seasons as well as the theatre component of 2003′s Art-O-Matic. Jenny was a nominee for the Women’s Information Network’s Young Women of Acheivement Award in 2001. Jenny grew up in Northern Virginia and graduated cum laude from Virginia Commonwealth University with a BFA in Theatre. She is married to sound designer Matthew Frederick and is currently the Producer for Cultural Development Corporation’s Source Festival and Mead Theatre Lab Program.

Randy Baker is a playwright, director and the co-Artistic Director of Rorschach Theatre which he founded with Jenny McConnell Frederick in the summer of 1999. Plays he has written and had produced at Rorschach Theatre include the full-length plays Dream Sailors and After the Flood and the short plays Paolo and Francesca, Beit Jala and Crunch. Other produced plays include the full length plays Circus of Fallen Angels at the National Conservatory of Dramatic Arts, wild42hold at George Washington University and the short plays The Rabbit and The Snake and Cassandra Dances with the Devil at Source Theatre, A Lonely Dictator on the Eve of Revolution at Forum Theatre, The Boy Who Knew No Fear at Three Leaches Theatre (Colorado), Sam the Prophet, Veronica’s Omelet and The Wind at Their Backs at Extreme Exchange and The Ballad of Saint Valentine at the Washington Theatre Festival. Readings and workshops include Forgotten Kingdoms at National New Play Network, Inkwell Theatre, The Arts Club of Washington, Wordsmyth Theater (Houston) and the National Newborn Festival at MTWorks (New York) where it won the Audience Choice Award, The Burning Road which began as an educational workshop at Primary Stages and is now being developed at Arena Stage through the Playwrights Arena, The First Disobedience at American University and Theater Alliance, Gilgamesh at Rorschach Theatre and Vox at Theater Alliance. As a director with Rorschach Theatre he has directed After the Quake, 1001, Monster, Rhinoceros, Fair Ladies at a Game of Poem Cards, Behold!, JB, and Rhinoceros. He has also directed for Source Theatre, Inkwell Theatre, First Draft, NCDA’s Actors Repertory Theatre, Wayward Theatre, Cherry Red Productions and Young Playwrights Theater where he is a company member. Upcoming and current directing projects include The Minotaur at Rorschach Theatre and The Ice Wolf at Imagination Stage’s Conservatory. Upcoming writing projects include wild42hold which he has been commissioned to write for George Washington University and Monastery which is being developed through Theater J’s Locally Grown program. The First Disobedience will have a reading and continued development at Theater Alliance and Forgotten Kingdoms is receiving continued development through The Inkwell. The Burning Road is being developed throughout 2013 at Arena Stage’s Playwrights Arena. Randy grew up overseas, mostly in Malaysia and Singapore and came back to attend the University of Richmond. He moved to Washington DC in 1997 and currently lives in Adams Morgan with his wife, costume designer Debra Kim Sivigny. He received his MFA in creative writing from Goddard College and is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America. He is adjunct faculty at American University and an instructor at the National Conservatory for the Dramatic Arts.

Resident Company Members:

 * Lindsay Allen, actor
 * Patrick Bussink, actor
 * Matthew Frederick, designer
 * Tim Getman, actor, designer
 * David Ghatan, designer
 * Maggie Glauber, actor
 * Eric Grims, designer
 * Cesar Guadamuz, actor
 * Robbie Hayes, designer
 * Lauren Hyland, producer, casting director
 * Casey Kaleba, fight choreographer, director
 * Jason Linkins, actor
 * Scott McCormick, actor
 * Karl Miller, actor
 * Rahaleh Nassri, actor, director
 * Tracy Lynn Olivera, actor
 * Debra Kim Sivigny, designer
 * Catherine Tripp, Producer, Director
 * Yasmin Tuazon, actor
 * Grady Weatherford, actor, director