About The Play
As an actress explores the character of Mata Hari, she discovers that she and her subject share an attraction to dangerous love.
Lovers, Letters, and Killers, also known as Almost Mata Hari, is a full-length play featured in theaters across the U.S. and Europe. It debuted with workshops at Coney Island USA, followed by 12 performances at New York's Theater for the New City under Obie Award winner Crystal Field. The play premiered in Europe at Berlin's Brotfabrik, toured the Netherlands, and recently appeared at the Triad Theater in New York.
The last production was directed by Kirsten Kinneging and the costume design was by Diana Gentleman. Almost Mata Hari - Lovers, Letters and Killers is based upon the immersive playwriting process of Mata Hari, an earlier solo show that was produced in 2015 by the Susan Batson Studio in Times Square. The making-of process presented a more intricate story that not only involved Mata Hari's life but also the creative process and all that it encompasses.
Lovers, Letters and Killers (Almost Mata Hari) is a 90-minute solo show, and can be performed with or without intermission.
Eva Dorrepaal doubles as playwright and lead actress in this one-woman show, delivering an exceptionally compelling performance magically portraying multiple roles. The play focuses on the creative process and its inspirations.
In the play, Ava prepares the role of Mata Hari, exploring a range of peculiar acting exercises, but soon finds her own history with men coming to the surface. The piece blurs the lines between acting and reality and is based upon two real life stories. Two women, a hundred years apart, both lost in the circle of dangerous love.
Mata Hari was notoriously known for revealing her body in "exotic dances" and having countless affairs with influential men on both sides of World War I's front lines.
Trapped in a spider web of men, Mata Hari was accused of counter espionage in Paris, and executed by firing squad. Fighting for her freedom until the very end, she refused to wear a blindfold.
Ava rehearses in her messy basement apartment, alone with her props, costumes and notes. Her struggle to resurrect Mata Hari prompts her to relive a dangerous love affair from her own past. Ava's lover Dragan was an irresistible mystic who worked as a street performer; an outcast from Serbia and Croatia who "liberated" himself and the women who loved him. A cult ritual claimed the life of his subsequent girlfriend.
Dragan: "In order to be healed, to liberate yourself, to be free... you have to have sex with me.
It opens up the chakra of creativity."
