A sold-out run of an intimate rendering of Tom Stoppard’s hauntingly hilarious classic – June 3-12, 2011 at the Dorothy Strelsin Theatre, NYC.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Hamlet’s hapless college pals, recruited by the king to kill their depressed friend, even though Hamlet is always a step ahead. Tom Stoppard brings their plight to center stage, following the pair as they are thrown again into their strange and eternally brief roles.

Set amidst the illusionist craze of the Victorian era, Big Rodent’s production of this classic show brought these two hopeless dreamers straight into our lives, where their struggle to understand parallels our oversaturated, overstressed society’s constant battle for a glimpse of meaning.

Presented in an intimate 60-seat black box, this production was a unique chance to see Stoppard’s work so up close and personal, adding an extra layer of intricacy with the Players double cast as the characters from Hamlet.

Directed by Cora Weissbourd

Featuring Adam Aguirre, Jordan Gray, Ian Heitzman, Nick Monroy, Leigh Poulos, David Sanchez, Kym Smith, Katie Rose Spence, and Jeremy Weber.

Cait Keane – Stage Manager
Andrew Lu – Lights
Jessa-Raye Court – Costumes
Chrissy Farrell – Sound

Produced by Joe Gallagher & Big Rodent

July 15 – 24, 2010
Wings Theatre, NYC

A Clash of Ages and Ideals in 1964 London

Big Rodent presents Oscar Wilde’s dark and witty comedy, where greed, forgiveness, and love all vie to control the fate of a family. Set in a time of Mods vs. Rockers, Prewar vs. Postwar, and Society vs. Free Love, the play finds the roots of the conflicts still at the heart of our civilization today. And all in time to get supper at the club!

Lord Robert Chiltern is a star on the rise, a man who has everything: a promising political career, a beautiful wife, and all associated cliches. But when an old American cohort, Mrs. Cheveley, appears, Lord Chiltern must confront the single dark secret of his past, a secret that could destroy all the good he has done. He turns to his closest friend, the millionaire playboy Lord Goring, who happens to be trying to woo Lord Chiltern’s sister. As all sides bicker and maneuver towards the sticky resolution, they must each decide what ends justify unsavory means.

Directed by Meghan Formwalt

Featuring: Adam Aguirre, Anna Bridgforth, Colleen Conroy, Alex Estrada, David Jenkins, Sarah Krokey, Joe Mathers, Nick Monroy, and Leigh Poulos

Assistant Director: Brian MacInnis Smallwood
Set: Stephen Esposito
Lights: Kyle McGahan
Costumes: Kerry Gibbons
Sound: Chrissy Farrell
Stage Manager: Cait Keane
Featuring: Adam Aguirre, Anna Bridgforth, Colleen Conroy, Alex Estrada, David Jenkins, Sarah Krokey, Joe Mathers, Nick Monroy, and Leigh Poulos.

View all 50+ Production Photos on Big Rodent’s Facebook Page

We are a non-profit organization that relies on donations to supplement the income from our shows. In order to continue producing high-quality classic plays at very reasonable prices, we need your donations!

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Big Rodent is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions
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Three tales of angstful adventure await you in this hilarious brouhaha of rain-soaked idiocy. Follow our young narrator as he discovers what a douchebag he used to be and how lucky he is now. At times funny, at times sad, at all times romantic and weird, this volume will teach you life’s most important lesson: never to hang out with girls who live in time-traveling castles.

And I thought we could unpaint our picket fences,
Instead your sister informed me, “She’s been channeling your exes!”

That’s when this night went from strange to demented:
I’d chased myself into the halls of Suck Mansion.

Sometimes it’s made of rain, sometimes adobe,
Sometimes my soft skin clinging like Velcro.

I parted a waterfall door like a curtain.
There you reclined, furiously dry.

Lawyers, Whores, and Beheadings: Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure is a comedy only in the sense that at the plays conclusion, none of the major characters are dead.

July 30 – August 8, 2009
Theater 3 @ Times Square, NYC

Big Rodent’s production of this pitch-black play is set in the 1990′s, in a law office bristling with affirmative action tension and power politics. When the Duke – the District Attorney – takes a leave of absence to plunge into the criminal underworld, he leaves Angelo, his most humorless deputy, in charge. Angelo wastes no time in making his presence felt, sentencing a young citizen, Claudio, to death for impregnating his girlfriend before they were married. When Claudio’s righteously pure sister, Isabelle, tries to intervene, Angelo finds himself tempted by his new power over this beautiful girl. Soon, all the characters fall into a tangled web of lust, graft, and deceit, mostly orchestrated by the delightfully twisted Duke. Along the way, he is awkwardly assisted and comically hindered by a strung-out defense attorney, a couple of helpless police officers, a highbrow pimp, and a drunken death-row inmate. Measure for Measure’s conclusion will leave you wondering whether anyone really escaped with their sanity and happiness intact, or whether Shakespeare had perhaps lost faith in all happy endings, in this, his final, darkest comedy.

Produced by: Joe Gallagher
Directed by: Taylor Shann
Light Design: Elizabeth Vinci
Set Design: Andrew Lu
Costume Design: Sean Tribble
Production Manager: Jen Rogers

One Pope lives in exile in France. The other believes he’s a 2000-year-old sexual god. Both are convinced that they are the one true mouthpiece of God on Earth. Thus, a succession struggle of lust, greed, incompetence and raging oedipal complexes ensues, one that will take the lives of many popes and test the patience of their true masters.

Directed by Joe Gallagher
Featuring: Adam Aguirre, Corey Ann Haydu, Kat Cox, Jonathan Monk, Mark Souza, Tiffany Redmon, and Jen Rogers
Co-Produced with Two Guys and a Credit Card