Catastophic Theatre presents SNOW WHITE by Donald Barthelme

Reception begins at 6:30pm | Reading begins at 7:00pm

Donald Barthelme's Snow White is tired of being "just a horsewife" to Bill, Dan, Edward, Hubert, Henry, Clem and Kevin, who, in her estimation "only add up to the equivalent of about two real men." While they tend to their commercial real estate properties and manufacture exotic high-end baby foods, she spends her days reading Mao Tse-tung, drinking vodka with orange juice, and impatiently waiting for the prince promised to her by history. But her imagination is stirring...

When Barthelme’s novel was published in 1966, critical response was a mixture of enthusiasm, admiration and puzzlement. Writing in Life Magazine, Webster Schott called Barthelme "the most perversely gifted writer in the United States. . . . SNOW WHITE has everything, including William Burroughs cut ups, words posing as paintings, ribald social commentary, crazy esthetic experiments, and comedy that smashes.” Jack Kroll, in Newsweek, called Barthelme a “splendid writer who knows how to turn spiritual dilemmas into logic, and how to turn that logic into comedy which is the true wised-up story of our time.” Beyond its formal radicalism and experimental language, the book is a funny-sad meditation on the promises and disappointments of love, a topographical map of what one critic called “the cratered landscape of the broken heart.”

Working from Barthelme's original manuscript, notes and revisions, Catastrophic Theatre will present the world premiere of the author's own stage adaptation of SNOW WHITE. In conjunction with Brazos Bookstore and Inprint, a public reading of the play will be given at Brazos Bookstore on November 9, 2016. The production will open at Catastrophic Theatre in April 2017.