Entering into its sixth year, the Pumpkin Pie Show has established itself has an all-points artistic hodgepodge of music, theatre, and literature. By cross-pollinating mediums normally left separate, the PPS has culminated a new form of performance art -- picking and choosing the essentials of each genre and channeling their positive properties into an entertaining and truly original experience. After touring such varied locations as the New York International Fringe Festival (1997 and 1999), the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (1998), the San Francisco Institute of Art (2000), and Coney Island, New York (1998), the world has just begun to open itself up to the Pumpkin Pie Show.

In essence, the PPS is a rigorous story-telling session backed with its own live soundtrack. It is built upon the same structure as a rock band, complete with musicians and vocalists, channeling a similar sense of immediacy and connection between performer and audience members only experienced at a concert. The fourth wall is obliterated within the Pumpkin Pie Show. The dividing line between the spectator and actor is pushed behind the last seat, actually incorporating the audience into the performance -- creating a stronger ligament between these two opposing forces. Each show consists of four fifteen minute short stories, originally written to be read, yet simultaneously working on the stage. These first-person narratives are easily translatable into theatrical terms, where, when the words found on the page are given voice by an actor, the text evolves into monologue. By enveloping each story within its own sonic-packaging of music, a stronger emotional current is delivered to the audience -- underscoring the action the same way a soundtrack to a film would.

“Clay McLeod Chapman is like Stephen King transmogrified
into a post-punk preacher poet. He writes - and performs with voracious energy character monologues that are American-Gothic tall tales of the psyche.”

Donald Hutera,

The Scotsman