A DIY Séance to Summon Harry Houdini
“I literally just googled ‘instructions for a séance’. I took the night off, escaped the kid’s bedtime, to try this here with you. Tonight.”
Take your seat at Katie Bender’s “DIY séance party”, as she attempts night after night to escape her own life by summoning the spirit of master escapologist Harry Houdini. This theatrical experiment, first workshopped at The Playwrights Center and The Alley All New Festival, transforms Bender’s mesmerizing personal journey into a collective experience that asks the audience: what are you trying to escape?
Don’t miss the opportunity to participate in this unpredictable theatrical event, where reality and illusion converge in a gripping exploration of the human experience.
Creatives
Katie Bender
Creator
Katie Bender (she/her/hers) is a playwright, performer and theatermaker. Her plays include Judith, SHE WOLF, The Survivors/Los Sobrevivientes, Instructions for a Séance and Howling, Texas to name a few. Filled with games, physical exertion and a poetic delight in the mundane, her work often examines the surprising ways humans transform within impossible systems.
Katie’s work has been developed and produced all over the country, including at Hyde Park Theater, ZACH, The Alley, Shrewds, EST, Kitchen Dog, The Playwrights’ Center, LAUNCH PAD and Fusebox Festival, THT Rep, New Harmony Project, ACT Theatre and All For One Theater. She is the co-creator of Underbelly, with whom she made ecstatic site-specific performances such as Slip River, which received the Critics Table Award for Best New Comedy. Her play Judith received the B.Iden Payne Award for Best New Script. Katie was a Jerome Fellow at the Playwrights’ Center and is currently a Core Writer. She received her M.F.A from The University of Texas.
Creator
Katie Bender
Katie Bender (she/her/hers) is a playwright, performer and theatermaker. Her plays include Judith, SHE WOLF, The Survivors/Los Sobrevivientes, Instructions for a Séance and Howling, Texas to name a few. Filled with games, physical exertion and a poetic delight in the mundane, her work often examines the surprising ways humans transform within impossible systems.
Katie’s work has been developed and produced all over the country, including at Hyde Park Theater, ZACH, The Alley, Shrewds, EST, Kitchen Dog, The Playwrights’ Center, LAUNCH PAD and Fusebox Festival, THT Rep, New Harmony Project, ACT Theatre and All For One Theater. She is the co-creator of Underbelly, with whom she made ecstatic site-specific performances such as Slip River, which received the Critics Table Award for Best New Comedy. Her play Judith received the B.Iden Payne Award for Best New Script. Katie was a Jerome Fellow at the Playwrights’ Center and is currently a Core Writer. She received her M.F.A from The University of Texas.
Lily Wolff
Director
Director
Lily Wolff
From the Creator…
FROM PAGE TO STAGE
- Developed with support from ScriptWorks Revision Resource funding. Find more information about ScriptWorks at www.scriptworks.org
- This play was developed with the support of Playwrights’ Center.
- INSTRUCTIONS FOR A SÉANCE received a workshop in the Alley Theatre’s 2023
Alley All New Festival Rob Melrose, Artistic Director Dean R. Gladden, Managing Director