2025
2024
2023
2023
2025
Haunted Castle: The Rot Beneath
“The worst evil thrives beneath the surface.”
Witness six plays intertwined, each infested with terror to peak curiosities, raise goosebumps, and increase the heart rates of our guests.
HAUNTED CASTLE returns this October to invite you to survive a collection of horrifying Irish legends, each exploring the rot beneath life’s surface. Will you accept the invitation?
Six Rounds of Vengeance
by Qui Nguyen
A co-production with All Queer Shakespeare
In post-apocalyptic “Lost Vegas,” a young gunslinger named Jess December enlists the help of a mysterious samurai cowboy to help avenge the murder of her sister.
To get revenge, they may have to become just as bloodthirsty as the monsters they’re facing.
Get ready for a high-octane, post-apocalyptic Wild Western, fight show, like nothing you’ve seen on stage before. “Six Rounds of Vengeance” is packed with sword fights, grit, queer heroes, and grindhouse style.
Directed by Ric Alpers, with jaw-dropping fight choreography from Pantheon: A Team of Fight Directors, this Arizona premiere features a majority POC, LGBTQ+ cast that brings raw power and heart to the stage.
“Overflowing with awesome stage combat and imaginative writing, this show packs a huge theatrical punch”
TheatreMania
A Doll’s House
Nora Helmer has been hiding something. A secret that once exposed, could ruin the perfect world her Husband has made for her and their children.
Who can Nora trust? What will she do to keep her family? When will everyone finally stop leering at her? The Ibsen classic as you’ve never seen it before.
Fat Men in Yoga Pants
“Fat Men In Yoga Pants” is a semi-autobiographical work wherein an everyday Vinyasa 2 yoga class becomes a crucible for 90s cruising, crushes on Pedro Pascal, and it’s-funny-when-it-happens-to-guys when Ben accidentally says the quiet part out loud during an hour flow of yoga poses and discovery.
A Klingon Hamlet
You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon.
Gorkon
Come see the great classic Hamlet; set in the Star Trek universe.
If our universal translators are functioning, you will hear it in perfect English but with phasers, and Bat’leths blazing.
Hamlet’s father, the emperor, has died and his brother has married with Hamlet’s mother.
Will Hamlet rise up or bring dishonor to his family?
The show is adapted by Keath Hall and Eric Darling-Bond
Come join us for beverages and bravado!
Babalon
In the 1940’s, Jack Parsons worked in his lab by day to build rockets; by night, the young scientist would host occult parties in his Pasadena home. Both a pioneering rocket scientist and disciple of Aleister Crowley, Parsons attracted strange souls to him like moths to a flame – people like the mysterious artist Marjorie Cameron and the notorious L. Ron Hubbard.
Together these three would work mystic rituals in the desert to invoke the goddess Babalon and usher in a new era. They would make history together… and tragedy.
Based on an incredible true story, Paul Green’s Babalon follows Parsons, Hubbard, Cameron, and Crowley as they commune and scheme and conjure their futures into being.
A U.S. premiere, Space 55, Ronin Theatre Collaborative and The Irish Cultural Center are proud to bring this poetic, haunting work of speculative theatre to life.
Directed by BJ Garrett, Babalon features performances by Angel Lopez, Clara Bentz, Matt Clarke, Cody Goulder, Melody Knudson, Maddie Miller, and Ken Bailes.
2024
Coriolanus
by William Shakespeare
The Tragedy of Coriolanus by William Shakespeare might just be an Arizona premiere of a 400 year old play. “In a place called Rome”, the country’s greatest general and soldier is thrust into the world of politics against his will. How will he fair against enemies he cannot attack directly?
Set in post revolutionary America, Ronin Theatre begs the question how do we view and treat our heroes when we are done with them? What is the difference between honor and pride? Come see the battles, the glory and the anguish this winter.
The Haunted Castle
Welcome to The Haunted Castle, where the Irish legends you know and love come to life in this interactive performance experience presented by the Irish Cultural Center and McClelland Library and Ronin Theatre Company.
Comprised of eight (8) individual, original adaptations of Irish ghost stories, audience memberswill travel around the Irish Cultural Center and McClelland Library to experience new retellings of old folklore. Complete with stories including the Banshee and vampires, this family-friendly (yes, kids are welcome) theatrical experience is not one to be missed!
Adaptions include:
Fly Up to Heaven written by Eric Darling-Bond
Fiona and the Ghost written by Cody Goulder
The Faceless written by Antoinette Martin-Hanson
A Ghostly Curse written by Angelica Howland
The Banshee of Bunratty Castle written Kelsey Kelleher
A Final Round of Drinks written by Ashley Naftule
The Magic Trick written by John Perovich
Carmilla written by Carlin Thomas
The Hairy Ape
“The Hairy Ape” follows the protagonist, Bob “Yank” Smith, on his journey of realization that the capitalist society all around him has left him and his physical strength behind as the upper class has claimed superiority over Yank and the other coal feeders that work aboard an ocean liner.
O’Neil is an Irish-American playwright. The Hairy Ape was first performed in 1922, the writer calls it a comedy though it is first and foremost an expressionist piece of art. It will be our pleasure to transport the audience back in time with music and movement.
The Lonesome West
The Lonesome West was nominated for a Tony Award in 1997. It tells the story of two brothers locked in turmoil in their home in a rural part of Ireland. The writing of Martin McDonagh is renowned for darkness and macabre balanced with comedic storytelling: The Banshees of Inisherin, In Bruges, The Pillowman.
2023
Twelfth Night
by William Shakespeare
A Shakespearean comedy about mistaken identity arrives just in time for the holidays. Come join us for drinks and laughter at the picturesque Irish Cultural Center.
Synopsis: Viola and her twin brother Sebastian have been shipwrecked; each believes the other to be drowned. Viola disguises herself as a young man and, under the name of Cesario, gets a job as a servant for the Duke, Orsino.
Orsino is in love with Olivia, but she’s mourning for her dead brother, so has rejected all his advances so far. He sends Cesario (who is really Viola) with love letters to woo Olivia on his behalf. Unfortunately for the Duke, Olivia is taken in by Cesario’s disguise and falls in love with him. Viola has secretly fallen in love with Orsino, and Orsino is confused by his feelings for his new ‘male’ servant. So, Viola loves Orsino, Orsino loves Olivia and Olivia loves Cesario/Viola.
Olivia’s butler, Malvolio, disapproves of all the other members of her household – her drunken uncle Sir Toby Belch, his friend Sir Andrew Aguecheek and her servants, Maria, Feste and Fabian. Fed up with Malvolio constantly spoiling their fun, they decide to play a practical joke on him. Malvolio is secretly in love with Olivia, and the others trick him into believing that these feelings are returned. Lots of confusion follows around the mistaken identity. Eventually all is revealed, the brother and sister are reunited as love triangles and mixed emotions are resolved.
Dracula in Tombstone
March, 1882, after the gunfight at the OK Corral, and a few years before the events which occur in the novel Dracula.
The legend, Wyatt Earp, and his wife, Josephine, come into Tombstone to wrap up affairs and loose ends before he finishes his ride and leaves Arizona for good to settle down in San Francisco. They and a widely peculiar group of characters encounter an evil nobody ever would foresee. When people begin dropping dead and miraculously coming back to life with a penchant for blood consumption, the group of the Silver Moon Saloon House springs into action. What was supposed to be the end of gunfighting and violence becomes one last fight for survival for Wyatt Earp.
The Monster of Tempe Town Lake
When a college student goes missing from “A” Mountain, a group of passionate, amateur sleuths band together to find their friend. But they find something else — something monstrous. Audiences can expect a goofy, ghastly, and supernatural time at the theatre.
“The play is a celebration of the silly and the spooky with a whole lot of references to Tempe,” shares Perovich. “The idea stemmed from the title, and it grew with inspiration from Mark Frost and David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, as well as the tropes and shenanigans of Scooby-Doo.”
The show features performances by Kiley Bishop, Eric Bond-Darling, Matt Clarke, Jason Hall, Kate Haas, Ryan L. Jenkins, Antoinette Martin-Hanson, and Lamar Overton; directed by Cody Goulder; assistant directed and dramaturged by Melody Knudson; stage manager MJ Beckett; costumes by Ivy Kanani and Nicole Thompson; sound by John Perovich.
Waiting for Godot
Samuel Beckett’s hilarious play WAITING FOR GODOT is considered the masterpiece of existentialism, in which Samuel Beckett explores the futility of man’s hope.
Beckett was an Irish novelist, dramatist and director.
Come see it brought to life in the beautiful atmosphere of the Irish Cultural Center and McClelland Library.
How I Came to Be Buffalo Bill
Presented by Ronin Theatre Co., Featuring local Arizonian winning actor Keath Hall. William F. Cody, better known as Buffalo Bill, did more to popularize the American Wild West than any other person.
Made famous by dime novelist Ned Buntline, Cody used his innate gift of self-promotion to capitalize on a reputation as an army scout, American Indian fighter and buffalo hunter. This one-person performance gives you a backstage pass to the origins of his reenactment rodeo: Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show!
The Playboy of the Western World
Nothing too exciting ever found its way to Flaherty’s tavern until the day Christopher Mahon walked in. A stranger from far off, Christy says he’s on the run for the murder of his own father. Barbaric, you’d think? Outrageous, they’d say? But, in this establishment, a reputation like that will make you a regular talk of the town.
Soon enough, Christy is winning over the townsmen with stories of heroism and valor and winning over the ladies with charm and danger, especially the impressionable Pegeen Mike. But, is Christy Mahon the sort of playboy he claim to be? I mean, what sort of a man really can kill his dad and get away with it?
Henry V
by William Shakespeare
Join us for a night of Shakespeare under the stars as the Ronin Theatre Company joins the Irish Cultural Center and McClelland Library to present Henry V with a modern twist.