“A combination of slapstick merriment, blank verse, puppetry, high drama, improvisation, fairy tale, magic and romance.” --The Juneau Empire

Foodstable is inspired by the world’s first and most notorious gore film, Blood Feast, directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis. Released in 1963, the film shocked and allured audiences with its novel exploitation tactics of combining mutilation, cannibalism and buckets of blood with ordinary teen angst. The film has become a cult classic and has provided inspiration for many modern horror hits such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the Halloween franchise.

In this production, Toth will take the original film as his raw material. Like what was done to the unfortunate young women of the original, Toth will take a hatchet to the film’s contents to create a very different but related work for the stage. Using the cut-up technique made famous by the French Surrealists and William Burroughs, Toth takes the source material, smashes it into a million pieces and puts it back together again in various combinations. Some of the results are produced through happy accident and some are molded and shaped through compositional rehearsals with his actors and design team. The recorded dialogue from the film is also cut up and manipulated to provide counterpoint and resonance to the live performance. Songs and dances are created from the instrumentation and themes from the film’s original soundtrack.

Foodstable is representative of Toth’s unique style in its combination of vaudevillian humor, broad physicality, puppetry and textual experimentation. It also continues his study of acting style by juxtaposing the stilted B-movie technique of the film with a more modern and subtler sensibility. The final result is a beautiful but fractured tale of innocent romance striving to survive in a world awash in horror and fear.

Richard Toth’s background as a circus performer and puppeteer infuse his stage spectacles with vibrant theatricality. His work incorporates slapstick humor, broad physicality and powerful imagery borne of his manipulation of traditional styles of puppetry, mask and clowning.

Richard Toth was the Artistic Director of Misery Loves Company, an international theatre company he co-founded in Prague, Czech Republic. While there, he directed or produced over 30 productions including the Eastern European premiere of Angels in America. Other productions include The Anger in Ernest and Ernestine, Nightingale for Dinner, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, King Stag and many locally developed world premieres including his own play Dumb. He has recently directed his own adaptation of Carlo Gozzi’s King Stag at the Perseverance Theatre in Juneau, Alaska, and is currently in post-production on a series of short films. As a performer, Richard has worked as an actor, circus clown and puppeteer in the United States and Europe. In NY his work has been seen at HERE, The Ohio, PS 122, Soho Rep., Lincoln Center and others.  Film appearances include Les Miserables, Confess, Dead Fire, Hostage Train and The Buttoners. TV appearances include Sex and the City, Law and Order, and Curb Your Enthusiasm.