Toilet Fire: Rectums in the Rectory

Written and performed by Eliza Bent
Directed by Kevin Laibson
May 14 - 23, 2015

Toilet Fire: Rectums in the Rectory is a celebration and ceremony of the one thing that unites us all: our need to go. Using the structure of an ancient religious ritual to talk about matters of digestion, philosophy, and faith, Toilet Fire: Rectums in the Rectory explodes with song, audience participation, and unexpected textual twists.

PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE:
Thursday, May 14 @ 8pm – preview
Friday, May 15 @ 8pm
Saturday, May 16 @ 8pm
Wednesday, May 20 @ 8pm
Thursday, May 21 @ 8pm
Friday, May 22 @ 2:15 pm and @ 8 pm
Saturday, May 23 @ 8pm

MORE INFO: Toilet Fire features such characters as an elderly Peest (priest), a sullen teen (alter-girl), a talkative flight attendant (cantor), and a variety of congregants with an assortment of ailments. By the end of this tour-de-toots, the trappings of a religious service fall away and Toilet Fire reverts to a solo show with the real Eliza Bent talking and ultimately asking: How can we best relieve suffering? There will be puns. There will be poo.

Dramaturdgy by Jess Barbagallo
Set and Lighting Design by Chris Bowser
Costumes by Enver Chakartash
Singing and piano-ing by Alaina Ferris

PRESS:
“Bent is one to watch, with all the makings of a great comedienne.”
—Matthew Clayfield, Real Time Arts

“Eliza Bent’s delightful, melancholy comedy The Hotel Colors makes experiential in-between-ness into a poignant metaphor for life’s many periods of uncertainty.”
—Jacob Gallagher-Ross, Village Voice

“In using the distancing effects of language as a blunt instrument simultaneously to create strangeness and cut more deeply to the heart of human experience, Ms. Bent follows a long tradition of adventuresome playwrights.”
—Claudia La Rocco, New York Times

Part of the series DAMNABLE SCRIBBLING: Brooklyn College Playwrights at JACK

Eliza Bent’s plays include The Beyonce (Breaking String Theatre, Payne Award for Outstanding Theatrical Event), Blue Wizard / Black Wizard (Other Forces, Incubator Arts Project), and The Hotel Colors (Bushwick Starr, L magazine’s 25 Best Stage shows of 2013). Her performance pieces such as Fire the Hire and Toilet Time with Eliza Bent have been workshopped and developed with New Georges, Catch!, Great Plains Theatre Conference and Dixon Place. Bent was a senior editor at American Theatre magazine and a founding company member of the Obie-award winning company Half Straddle. She lives in Brooklyn. MFA in playwriting Brooklyn College.