[spacer height=”0.1px”]Marcus David
October 2025
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We are in the height of this year’s spooky season and for those of us that revel in the macabre 59E59 Theaters is offering up something that will truly make your blood curdle with DREADFUL EPISODES a wonderful theatrical collage inspired by the illustrations of Edward Gorey. In somewhat surrealist fashion DREADFUL EPISODES presents us a series of dark comedic vignettes that perfectly blend death with humor, while transporting the audience into an odd Victorian world filled with ill-fated romance, troubled children, and the dangers of a windy cliff.
It is a thrill to see co-directors Mark Jaster and Sabrina Mandell bring the pages of Gorey’s books to life. The staging is bare, save a few musical instruments and some Gorey-inspired typography, and yet this production manages to present us with some frightful images of danger and death mixed with a visual wittiness that also leaves us no other choice than to chuckle at the misfortune of others. The characters lean heavily on pantomime and it should be noted that Mark Jaster served as a teaching assistant to Marcel Marceau, the famous French mime artist and actor. Thus the art of pantomime is used to great effect throughout the production and particularly well during a calamitous croquet match executed with exquisite precision. There are plenty of song and dance numbers to further spook the audience with sole musician Stephanie Baird creating a cool melancholy vibe with tunes that are part Tom Waits and part Tiger Lillies.
DREADFUL EPISODES features Stephanie Baird, Gwen Grastorf, Mark Jaster, Sabrina Selma Mandell, Jay Owen and Sarah Olmsted Thomas.
Happenstance Theater
Directed by Mark Jaster & Sabrina Mandell
HALLOWEEN COSTUME CONTEST
Join us when the veil is thin and the spirits are out to kick off your Halloweekend festivities. Show up in your spookiest, scariest, Edward Gorey-iest costume to the October 31 performance of DREADFUL EPISODES at 59E59 Theaters. The Happenstance Theater Ensemble will be choosing the best Victorian, Whimsical and Gorey inspired costumes of the evening, with winners walking away with special Victorian mourning prizes.
DREADFUL EPISODES
59E59 Theaters
59 East 59th Street, NYC
October 8 – November 2, 2025
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HAPPENSTANCE THEATER, founded in 2006, is a professional company committed to devising, producing and touring original, performer-created visual, poetic Theatre. Our ensemble has been developing work together since 2012. We are eclectically skilled artists who craft all aspects of our pieces from concept to realization. Under the Artistic co-Direction of Mark Jaster and Sabrina Mandell, we harvest imagery from the past and re-contextualize it in performances that address the universal themes of mortality and the ephemeral. With the simplest means – humor, whimsy, music, silence, text, physical comedy, object manipulation, vulnerability and generosity – we seek to elevate the moment when the performers and audience meet, to lift the encounter beyond the daily and pedestrian into the realms of dreams, poetry, and art. Meaning is often found by happenstance.
