Headless May 19, 2007

The eccentric son of a wealthy family is drawn "like a moth to a flame" by the mysterious headless woman at a traveling carnival in "Headless," an erotically charged new drama by Lea Floden.

Surrounded by side show snake charmers, hard-boiled roughnecks, and an eight year-old fortune teller wise beyond her years, Frank, a young man with a death wish, and Net, the "headless" woman who has turned her back on life, face the mysteries of their pasts and struggle toward personal redemption. Set in the dustbowl plains of the Midwest during the Great Depression, "Headless" combines haunting memory and gritty realism in a dark romance about people with missing emotional parts.

Floden, who grew up in Illinois, saw the headless woman at the state fair as a child and it really stuck. Years later, she visited a traveling carnival where she again came upon a headless woman booth. "I started talking to the carnies. They were all telling me their gossip and trying to impress me with sordid stories. I found myself obsessed - kind of the way Frank is obsessed in the play. During this time I was performing in a play opposite a man who might as well have been a blank slate - to me it seemed as if there was a huge hole in his personality. The combination of trying to figure him out and getting caught up with these people inspired the play."

Although set in the shady and exotic world of traveling carnivals, this is a play that speaks to anyone who feels as though he or she is an outsider.

"Headless" runs Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 pm and Sundays at 3 pm at the Electric Lodge, 1416 Electric Avenue in Venice (one block east of Abbot Kinney Blvd., just south of California). There is free parking in the on-site lot. For reservations and information, call (213) 368-9552 or visit www.EnsembleStudioTheatreLA.org.

Official Website: http://www.EnsembleStudioTheatreLA.org