Lions

Overview

Lions
From Lightning Rod Special
Written and Performed by Alice Yorke and Scott R. Sheppard
Directed and Developed by Sarah Blush

From the creators of Fringe hits like Nosejob, The Appointment (New Yorker Best of 2023), SPEECH, and Underground Railroad Game (Obie Award), comes an unsentimental two-hander about the business of letting our dads die. With a dose of Kafka and A Christmas Carol, Lions disassembles the myths our fathers told themselves about what it means to be a great man. Enter a world of breathing machines, Christmas ghosts, to-do lists, shirts that smell like grass, and the most romantic disappointments of our fathers’ lives. Part clown show and part deconstructed eulogy, Lions tries to honor our fathers by not denying them the humanity they could not always offer themselves. A show about death that is not about grief, but instead asks, ‘What does it mean to live a good life?’

About the Artist

Lightning Rod Special is an award-winning Philadelphia-based company that makes genre-defying original theater from the ground up. Their work explodes complex and controversial questions with precision and play. Since 2012, they have made eight full-length works, an audio series, and toured their productions to 16 cities in 5 countries. LRS has a history of creating performances around contested American topics. Recent works include "Nosejob," "SPEECH," "The Appointment," (Best Theater in 2023 in The New Yorker, Best Theater in 2019 in The New York Times), and "Underground Railroad Game" (2017 Obie Award for Best New American Theater Work, top 25 shows in the past 25 years by The New York Times).

Credits