volume of smoke:
Calamity at Richmond, Being a Narrative of the Affecting Circumstances Attending the Awful Conflagration of the Theatre in the City of Richmond, on the Night of Thursday, the 26th of December, 1811.

Horse Trade presents:
Volume of Smoke
written by
Clay McLeod Chapman

directed by
Isaac Butler and Clay McLeod Chapman
music composed by
Erik Sanko

The Theatre of Venice was struck by lightning, 1769. Dozens were trampled to death.
The Amsterdam playhouse took fire, 1772. Seven people suffocated from smoke.
The theatre at Sargossa, 1772. Nearly half the audience perished.
The Palais Royal burnt to the ground, 1781 -- during the French opera, of all things.
The theatre at Montpelier, 1783. Five hundred lives were lost there.
The theatre at Mentz, 1786.
The London Opera House, 1789.
The Royal Circus, 1805.
The theatre at Altona, 1807.
The theatre at Berlin, 1808.

All burned down, hundreds of persons burnt with them.
     And you ask me why I never go to the theatre.

People refuse to look back at their tragedies. They insist that for every current catastrophe, they were the first to experience it. But history proves otherwise. Tragedy is nothing new. To you or to the other hundreds of thousands of people who've experienced it. Try whining to the people who died in the fire at the Rickett's Circus in Philadelphia. The Pantheon. The Covent Garden.
     From this fire, the people of Richmond will weep. They'll beseech for God's good will to spare them from such hardship.
     But I'll tell you this: You just wait until the next generation comes. The same will happen to them, soon enough. And the next. And the next. And what none of them will ever realize is that it's happened all before. Particularly in Richmond.

   This city deserves to burn down.

Orion Taraban (company) is a recent graduate of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts where, after several years studying at the Experimental Theatre Wing, he received a BFA in acting. While in academic bondage, he had the good fortune to play many enviable roles, including Heiner Muller in Emma Griffin's "Full Circle," Hamlet in Ravi Jain's "The Prince," and The Man in Jennie Liu's "I Fall Again and Again." Orion was most recently seen performing the titular role in "The Nostalgic Recollections of Raymond Boggs" in the American Living Room Festival at HERE. He is very grateful to Isaac for the opportunity to act for an audience not entirely comprised of fellow students and doting parents.

Hannah Bos (company) has performed in Clay McLeod Chapman's redbird and The Pumpkin Pie Show: Ringside Seats, and Andrei Serban's Lysistrata. This spring she performed in A Thought about Raya which she co-wrote with Paul Thureen at the Red Room. She received her MFA in acting from the American Repertory Theater for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard University/M.X.A.T and her B.A. from Vassar College.

Sabrina Braswell (lighting designer) has been involved with Horse Trade in many capacties including Venue Director at St Mark's for The HA! Comedy Festival, and Assistant Lighting Designer on The Horse Trade production of "Cocaine Dreams." Her other lighting design credits include Tooth and Nil's "The Ballad of Yachiyo" at The Vital Theater; The Pumpkin Pie Show's "Donation Plate"and "Ringside Seats" at The Red Room, The Belt Theater and The Raymond Hodges Theater in Richmond, VA; Team Raya's "A Thought about Raya" at The Red Room and El Milagro Theater, as well as shows in The Fringe Festival, The GAWK II Festival, The Women Center Stage Festival and the "Sketch Fights" series. She'd like to thank Erez, Kimo, Clay, St. Anthony's Dance and Juan Valdez.

Clay McLeod Chapman (writer/director) is the creator of the Pumpkin Pie Show, a rigorous storytelling session backed by its own live soundtrack. He is the author of rest area, a collection of short stories, and miss corpus, a novel -- both published by Hyperion books.

Daryl Lathon’s (company) recent work includes RECKLESS and AS YOU LIKE IT with Kaleidoscope Theatre Company, RUBBER (World Premiere), NAOMI IN THE LIVING ROOM AND OTHER SHORT PLAYS, DEAD RECKONING with Soho Rep, and FAUSTUS with Genesis Rep. Regional credits include CORIOLANUS, A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM, and KING LEAR (The Shakespeare Theatre); DEATH OF A SALESMAN (New Stage Theatre); MASTER CLASS (Theatre Virginia). TV credits include LINC’S (Showtime), THE CHAMBER, and LEGACY.

Kalle Macrides (company) is thrilled to be working for the first time with Isaac and Clay!  Kalle is Executive Director of Adhesive Theater Project – www.adhesivetheater.com.  Her past stage credits with Adhesive include Frank Wedekind's Spring Awakening, Chikamatsu Monzaemon's The Battles of Coxinga, and the collaboratively written premiere of Kirby.  She was also seen committing patricide as Elektra in Ethel Eichelberger's Klytemestra, as part of the RidicuFest at Nada Show World.  Other stage productions include: T.S. Elliot's The Rock, Richard Foreman's Miss Universal Happiness, The Roar of the Twenties - a stage adaptation of the work of Dorothy Parker, Ten Nights in a Barroom, Larry and the Werewolf, A Midsummer's Night Dream, Lysistrata, and Richard III. Kalle holds an MA in Performance Studies from NYU and a BA in Theater from Sarah Lawrence College.

Paul Thureen's (company) recent performances include Clay McLeod Chapman's "Pumpkin Pie Show: Donation Plate" and "redbird" and One Year Lease's tour of "Oresteia" in Athens and Milan. With Hannah Bos, he created and performed in "A Thought About Raya" which recently ran at The Red Room. Paul has performed with Theatre de la Jeune Lune and studied at the Moscow Art Theater.

Abe Goldfarb is co-artistic director of Gotham Shakespeare Co., and this fall directs Titus Andronicus, their first full production.  Favorite roles: Jaques (As You Like It), Ahab (redbird), Pistol/Dauphin (Henry V).  Abe trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.  Proper 'Bo, I tell thee.

Emily Mitchell (company) In New York, most recently, Tasting Memories (starring Rosemary Harris, Philip Bosco, Alvin Epstein, Richard Easton); The Madwoman of Chaillot (understudy for Anne Jackson); The Firebugs; Troilus and Cressida; Wit; The Duchess, aka Wallis Simpson; Fundamental; 'Tis Pity She's a Whore: A Rock Musical;Love's Labor's Lost; A Midsummer Night's Dream. Provincetown Playhouse: A Touch of the Poet; A Woman of No Importance; Mrs. Warren's Profession; The Grass Harp; Diff'rent.

Isaac Butler (director) Previously with Clay McLeod Chapman: developed and directed redbird for Studio-42 (45 below), directed positive id for Cofounder at the Kraine theater and acted in pumpkin pie show: donation plate at the Red Room, the Belt and in Richmond Virginia.  Other directing credits include the US Premier of Line Knutzon's First You're Born (Peter Jay Sharp Theater), cop-out by John Guare at the Access Theater, Removing the Head by Josh Ben Friedman (the Kraine Theater), Horrible Child by Lawrence Krauser (the Tank), The Profane Comedy by James Morrow at Theater 80, and productions of Lanford Wilson's The Family Continues, Nicky Silver's Pterodactyls, Daniel MacIvor's Never Swim Alone, Paula Vogel's Hot 'n' Throbbing and Shakespeare's Henry IV part 1 at various venues in upstate New York. Isaac received his BA from Vassar College and is a member of the Lincoln Center Director's Lab.