Unsettling the Stage | The Catastrophic Theatre

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Defining an audience for a theater with no boundaries

Provocative, politically charged, profoundly moving stories await the curious few.

Wielding intangible themes and experimental formats, Catastrophic Theatre’s ensemble group massacres conventional storytelling, promising patrons “We will destroy you.”

Project details

Insight

Houston’s home for new plays and musicals, Catastrophic Theatre develops, commissions and produces theatrical experiences that defy simple description. Rarely working with big names or familiar titles, the ensemble-based company instead aims to draw in audiences by making them collaborators in their work.

But they don’t just want to fill seats—they’re looking for co-conspirators in the massacre of storytelling convention.

Impact

Langrand has partnered with Catastrophic to help bring their intangible themes and experimental formats to life. We devour each season’s scripts. We pepper the playwrights with questions. We collaborate with the theatre’s artists. And, like Catastrophic does from Act One to curtain call, we throw caution to the wind.

Our work for Catastrophic showcases their unique brand of performance art across posters, playbills and the theatre’s own website, and has even been featured in publications such as Graphis alongside award-winning design. More importantly, the creative serves as an entrée for audiences to begin thinking outside the box office: Even if they haven’t come all the way to Catastrophic’s side of the avant-garde, at least the door is now open.

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