WE THREE PLAYS Presents - Orignal Verse Play: Countess Bathory in Violent, Elizabethan Form

THE SYNOPSIS

Alleged to have brutally murdered hundreds of servants and bathed in the blood of young women to retain her legendary beauty, Elizabeth Bathory was simultaneously a subject of persecution and a powerful political figure in 16th and 17th century Hungary. Modelled after Shakespeare’s Richard III, Countess Bathory takes all the rumour and myth as fact, depicting Elizabeth as a mad tyrant fighting desperately to overcome her detractors, her political opponents, and her own dissolving grip on reality. This Elizabethan-style tragedy also focuses on the tumultuous lives of Elizabeth’s abused servants, her fierce love for her husband, and the political and financial machinations of the King, Matthias II.

THE COMPANY

We Three is a company dedicated to producing full-length original Elizabethan-style works. To date, all works have been written and directed by Artistic Director Jared McDaris. Previously work includes A Thousand Times Goodnight, an Elizabethan comedy based on stories from The Arabian Nights, which received its world premier at the Sunset Playhouse in Milwaukee, WI in 2015. A Thousand Times Goodnight was remounted in Chicago, IL at the Right Brain Project space in the summer of 2015. Most recently they staged the world premier of The Wayward Women at Mary’s Attic in Chicago, IL. We Three aims to write verse plays that pass the Bechdel test and give women roles that are often neglected in Elizabethan and Jacobean plays. Countess Bathory will be the first original Elizabethan tragedy produced by We Three.