Columbia College Chicago Theatre Department faculty member Michael Brown, co-director of the Theatre Department’s MA/MFA Program in European Devised Performance Practice, is the co-creator and principal producer of Invitation to a Beheading, a devised work of puppet and mask theatre based on Vladimir Nabokov’s novel. Presented by Brown in association with Rough House Theatre, Invitation to a Beheading plays July 25 through 28 at Chicago’s acclaimed Steppenwolf Theatre in the intimate 1700 Theatre flexible space, located at 1700 N. Halsted in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood.

Brown’s collaborators on the piece include Theatre Department faculty members Jacqueline Penrod and Frances Maggio, the show’s scenic and costume designers respectively.

In a bizarre and irrational world, a man is condemned to death for an absurd crime, and sent to a surreal prison to await his execution. But the prison may not be what it seems. Alternately disorienting, absurd, hysterical, and hopeful, Nabokov’s great novel is brought to the stage by Rough House and Michael Brown with their signature combination of playfulness and strangeness, full of surprising twists and turns, and told through a combination of puppetry, masks, and imaginative storytelling. For tickets, click here.