Shocking! Electrifying! Cutting and clever, “ElectroPuss” opens in Tempe

WHAT: The Department of Theatre in the Herberger College of Fine Arts at ASU presents “ElectroPuss,” a darkly comic coming-of-age tale, written by ASU alumnus Trista Baldwin and directed by Ron May. “ElectroPuss” is set against the nightmarish background of the corporate world taken to dangerous extremes, mixing serious social commentary with campy humor.

Welcome to Skyfire, USA, a small town where ElectricLand Electric Company employs 98 percent of the population. Meet Muffy Jonesmith, a Zap High graduate who lands her first job with ElectricLand. When big-hearted Muffy falls for file clerk Travis, sparks fly, with bizarre results: Muffy is electrocuted by a jealous co-worker and left for dead. Surviving the vicious attack, Muffy is now the mutated ElectroPuss! Ron May directs an unforgettable group of characters in their struggle to make their stand against the corporate power that suppresses and consumes them all.

Please note: This play contains adult language.

WHEN: March 22-23, March 27-30, 2002, at 7:30 p.m.; March 24, 2002, 2 p.m.; the March 24 performance will be sign language interpreted. 

WHERE: Lyceum Theatre, 901 S. Forest Mall on the ASU campus in Tempe.

TICKETS: $14 adults, $12 seniors, faculty and staff; $5 students.

INFORMATION, TICKETS: 480-965-6447.

About the production

Both playwright Trista Baldwin and director Ron May are graduates of ASU’s Herberger College of Fine Arts. Baldwin graduated in 1999 with a master’s degree in playwriting; May graduated that same year with a bachelor’s degree in theatre with a directing emphasis. This is their sixth collaboration.

“You’re not going to see anything else like this on a Valley stage any time soon,” director Ron May says. “Unless someone else is doing the typical boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl because she’s electrocuted by a co-worker and left for dead, boy-gets-girl-back except now she’s mutated into a huge cat, set smack-dab in an insane corporate freak show…

“I think anyone who is working a 9-to-5-er wishing they were doing something else is going to feel pangs of recognition with the material.”

Los Angeles Times theatre critic Philip Brandes calls the play, “An all-too timely caricature of corporate entities that prey on workers’ misplaced trust in the security of their corporate “family”... there’s no shortage of comic backbone in this quirky, often hilarious gem… Baldwin (has a) mercurial voice, whimsical at times, chilling at others.”

Trista Baldwin lives in New York City, where her new play “Sex and Other Collisions” was produced in June 2002 at the Currican Theatre. “ElectroPuss” received its world premiere in February 2002 from the Circle X Theatre Company at the Hudson Backstage in Los Angeles.

This play contains adult language. 

Media Contact:
Megan Krause
480-965-8795
megan.krause@asu.edu