Madame Edwarda Performs Tricks

Based on Georges Bataille’s “Madame Edwarda” and Barry Gifford’s “Tricks” | Directed by Dan Shanahan

Inside of room 603 in an unnamed hotel, a man dwells inside a parallel universe where he attempts to avoid his quickly approaching destruction caused by the murder of his wife. This fractured crime of love weaves George Bataille’s “Madame Edwarda” with Barry Gifford’s “Tricks”. Both stories spiral around a woman who has been created by the dangerously obsessive desires of their male companion. The opposing forces of man and woman play out inside the landscape of deception, while all the characters attempt to hide within the confines of fantasy. “Tricks” winds around it’s story with an evocative sparse dialogue and claustrophobic mood that places it in the tradition of film noir. “Tricks” contains within it a porthole transporting the performance into a vaudeville presentation of “Madame Edwarda”, where on her ropes and swing the female character continually transforms herself inside The Mirrors, a seedy brothel where the male character hopes to find evidence of God in the grotesque. The stories, in their attempt to deceive, must contend with a soothsayer who takes the form of a ballroom singer. In the end, a knock on the door is the last evidence of an outside world.