Kill Me Like You Mean It

Written by: Kiran Rikhye
Directed by: Jon Stancato

A leggy redhead is shot dead in the middle of her nightclub act and Ben Farrell PI, is on the case. The list of suspects grows to include a fatalistic femme fatale, an avaricious publisher, and a millionaire playboy who pens a serialized crime novel called Kill Me Like You Mean It. Turns out that art imitates life and Ben Farrell finds his own life in the pages of the playboy's pulp fiction while the redhead's simple murder mystery quickly degenerates into a sick game for which Farrell never learned the rules.
AboutCast and CrewPressPhotos
"Playwright Kiran Rikhye, director Jon Stancato, and their collaborators dazzle with their range and versatility. Kill Me Like You Mean It is sharp, smart parody"

Stolen Chair presents the second installment of its CineTheatre Tetralogy, a timely absurdist film noir for the stage as Ionesco might have imagined it, creating comic chaos out of the possibility that American life might actually be pointless.

" From its first murderous moments, Kiran Rikhye's Kill Me Like You Mean It is a clever, high-styling treat. " - Stanley Hall

Inaugurating its 5th anniversary season , Stolen Chair presents Kill Me Like You Mean It , an absurdist film noir for the stage and the second installment of the company's CineTheatre Tetralogy : 4 years, 4 productions, 4 classic film styles adapted for the stage.

A leggy redhead is shot dead in the middle of her nightclub act and Ben Farrell, American private detective, is on the case. The list of suspects grows to include a fatalistic femme fatale, an avaricious publisher, and a millionaire playboy who pens a serialized crime novel called… Kill Me Like You Mean It . Turns out that art imitates life and Ben Farrell finds his own life in the pages of the playboy's pulp fiction while the redhead's simple murder mystery quickly degenerates into a sick game for which Farrell never learned the rules.

With the lines blurred between the trauma of post-war, the paranoia of pre-war, and the jingoism of actual wartime, Americans today have been flung back to the late 1940s, when these anxieties first found their way onto the silver screen. Stolen Chair's director Jon Stancato has conceived of a world in which film noir combines with Theatre of the Absurd , another stylistic innovation of the post-war era. Through this unique pairing, Kill Me Like You Mean It poses the all-too-relevant question: How do we cope in a world that has stopped making sense? Stancato is joined by Stolen Chair's resident playwright Kiran Rikhye , who mines sources as diverse as Eugene Ionesco's The Bald Soprano and Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep to pen her 9 th original text for the company.

The inventive new productions of The Stolen Chair Theatre Company, one of NYtheatre.com's People of the Year , have been called “Utterly tremendous” by TimeoutNY 's Trav SD and “Curious and creative” by Backstage 's Leonard Jacobs.

The company is currently a Resident Artist of Horse Trade , where it has presented its last two world premiere collective creations, including the first installment of the CineTheatre Tetralogy, The Man Who Laughs , a live silent film for the stage, soon to be available in bookstores as part of New York Theatre Experience's new anthology Playing with Canons .

The company's most recent collective creation, Stage Kiss , an original Elizabethan gender-farce in blank verse, received a New York Innovative Theatre Award nomination for Best Lead Actor, company member Cameron J. Oro.