The Carnivorous Salon

a comedy without manners by Shawn Nacol

In the  late 18th century,  as the Enlightenment and its cynicism blossomed, the aristocracy began to demand new and surprising diversions. Intimate "clandestine" theatres opened their doors to closed circles of libertines. As they increasingly select and secretive, the theatres turned from traditional theatrical fare towards scripts involving erotic acts and real violence. Eventually, the demand for more extreme entertainments created an audience that put ‘snuff’ pornography on a handful of stages. Salons maintained their audiences by pushing the boundaries and keeping pace with appetites. Peasants were procured and put onstage for rape and murder on cue. This is historical fact.

In 1773, a play was written with an unsurvivable hero, requiring a young man of such physical stamina that it could not be played to completion. This too is fact.

What if someone survived the role?

The Carnivorous Salon: Four women. Two men. One room. One night. The end of an era and the beginning of something... else.

On this night, a boy will make a name for himself by doing the anatomically impossible. A girl will come out of the country with with a strange vendetta, obsessed with the Salon. And together they will create a legend.

Innocence defiled. Corruption rewarded.

Pass through a garden of flowers littered with broken glass. Things too beautiful and dangerous to be touched. Join us in an 18th century of the fever'd imagination...

Eye for an eye. Truth for a truth.

The Carnivorous Salon