Frayed Knot Collective’s ‘The Apartment Series’ by Maddie Schumacher
- Maddie Schumacher
- 4 hours ago
- 12 min read
I remember my freshman year of college, when anyone would ask me what type of acting I wanted to do, I’d always say “film.” This is not necessarily a lie; it just isn't the full truth.
I love films…but there was fear in owning I love theatre too, that maybe I love theatre more.
Let me rephrase, I always wanted to do plays. But when you tell people (your grandmother's friends) you want to be an actor - most people (your friends that aren't in the arts) - can only visualize a screen. Our world view can be small. Actors know plays are remarkable. Audiences know films are far more glamorous and make far more money.
Yet, I don't think anything is more effective than an actor talking for 90 minutes directly in the spectators lap. To be physically in the room, under imaginary circumstances, is about as cool as it gets. I am reminded as the years go on, when we talk about falling in love with art, with acting, for me, that all began watching a play.
Plays are tedious. They're lethargic. They're hard work and small pay. They're honorable. They're both accessible and inaccessible. They're triumphant. They're difficult. Yet full of intimacy. Plays (play festivals for that matter) require artists who still believe there is magic in rooms even with small seats (in quantity and quality).
Frayed Knot Collective, a new and emerging artistic production company/collective, strives to make accessible, boundary-pushing performance art. They too believe in theatre.
This February, 3 plays will go on to perform in repertory under Frayed Knot’s new series called “The Apartment Plays.” The Apartment Plays will feature Tape by Stephen Belber, Orphans by Lyle Kessler, and Seminar by Theresa Rebeck. This collection of contemporary plays all take place in one fixed, liminal location.
“Each of these plays features the identity formation of youth under pressure. Tape explores the reliability of memory, coming face-to-face with guilt, and processing trauma. Orphans explores youth as malleability, showcasing how growth is subject to trauma and violence as much as it is to positive influence. Seminar highlights youths’ obsessive competitive nature, as identity becomes linked to achievement, validation, and intellectual dominance” (frayedknotcollective.com).
The plays will run from February 26-March 1st at Iati Theatre (ticket link for each show in each subsequent interview).
While talking to these directors, I was transported right back to being seven years old in the audience. I am back to being marveled by the grit it takes to suspend disbelief. I am still baffled by the joy I get watching actors make it all make sense right in front of me.
It's hard work. But shouldn't it be?
The directors concur.
What? Tape by Stephen Belber
Who? Director Emma Garner
With? Starring Braden Misiaszek, Noah Livingston, and Maddie Schumacher (you guys know her)
When? Iati Theatre on February 28 & March 1
PROMO CODE: FKC25
Talk to me about your play? What is your play about/ summarizing the plays' pressing themes?
Stephen Belber’s Tape follows the reunion of two former high school classmates, Jon, a struggling filmmaker, and Vince, a washed-up drug dealer, in real time as they unpack the current state of their lives with one another almost ten years post-graduation. What begins as a casual meeting between old friends quickly escalates into a heated confrontation when the blurry details of a sinister event involving Amy, a girl they both dated in high school, come to light. Without giving too much away, Tape unpacks the concept of truth and how we interpret/digest what we are told to be facts. It positions the truth as something at the corner of hearsay and perception – what one person understands to be an indisputable fact, a reputable account of what happened and when, may be entirely different from that of another who witnessed the same events firsthand. Even the definition of truth is one that varies from person to person. Tape exemplifies and unravels this idea dutifully with just the right amount of indisputable detail to keep audiences (and actors) on their toes.
What drew you to this project? As a director .. as an artist…
There is absolutely nothing more fulfilling to me as a director than a three-person, one-location, real time play. It’s like designing a high-stakes metaphysical playground for puppets with a mind of their own, if you will – I get to create the framework, pull the strings, plant the seeds of context and credence, but at the end of the day, it is the actors that have the ultimate power over their interactions and the way they are interpreted. Prior to working on Tape, the majority of my directing work has been on large-cast musicals. Obviously, that kind of project comes with its own joys and victories, but when this play fell across my lap in late December, I was overjoyed. The opportunity to work on such a timely, resonant piece with three powerhouse performers (and an all-female technical team!) is the post-grad dream. I am always drawn to quippy, dialogue-heavy work (I was raised on The West Wing and Nora Ephron movies), and Tape falls right in line with that interest. Belber’s script is a directorial lesson in itself – subtext oozes from every beat, every hyphen, every syllable; choice is everywhere. To top it all off, the play’s 1996 setting finally gives purpose to all of the late-90s film junk hibernating rent-free in every corner of my brain. From a directorial standpoint, Tape is nothing short of a dream.
Why Now? What about this play needs a 2026 audience?
Not since its inception in 1999 has there been a “better”, more pressing time for a production of Tape. The American sociopolitical climate feels more fractured now than ever – shared reality hardly exists anymore due to the sheer amount of public discourse broadcast at us from every possible angle. Unbiased accounts of events are immediately drowned out by selective retellings, conflicting opinions, and deeply personal interpretations of “what happened”, leaving the public to speculate with nothing but misinformation in their pockets. People can experience the same moment and walk away with completely different understandings of what occurred, each shaped by their own emotions, biases, and self-preservation. Tape mirrors the discomfort of trying to untangle truth from personal perspective in a world where facts are debated, accountability is complicated, and personal testimony carries enormous weight. It reminds us that truth isn’t always just about evidence, but about who gets heard, who gets believed, and how narratives are shaped over time.
What do you hope audiences take away/ what do you hope the spectators leave with?
If absolutely nothing else, I hope our Tape leaves audiences thinking about the narratives floating around in their own heads. The play shows how memory isn’t just recall, it’s revision. Over time, we reshape events in ways that make us easier to live with, sometimes without even realizing we’re doing it. When we retell a story, are we seeking clarity or comfort? Are we remembering what happened, or the version that lets us off the hook? Tape highlights how easy it is to become the hero, the victim, or the bystander in our own minds, depending on what we need to believe to survive. More than anything, I hope audiences leave a little more aware of how perspective is built – not just from facts, but from emotion, pride, guilt, loyalty, and fear. That awareness can be uncomfortable, but it’s also where growth begins.
What? Orphans by Lyle Kessler
Who? Director Charlie Melkonian
With? Starring Max Newman, Joey Rothstein, and Brian Reese
When? Iati Theatre on February 27 & 28
PROMO CODE: FKC25
Talk to me about your play? What is your play about/ summarizing the plays' pressing themes?
At the beginning of Orphans, we meet Treat and Phillip, two brothers who live together in North Philadelphia. Phillip stays inside all day; Treat goes out and commits petty theft. Every day appears to be the same: Phillip waits for Treat all day (Phillip, by Treat’s doing, is deprived of an experience with the outside world), Treat comes home and tells Phillip exciting and dangerous stories from his day committing crimes in Downtown Philadelphia. All of this changes when we meet Harold.
Treat arrives late one night, having lured Harold home from a Downtown Philly bar, with a plan; he wants to hold Harold for ransom. Throughout the play, Harold becomes a mentor, a father figure, and most importantly, a teacher to both Treat and Phillip. He forms a unique, magical bond with Phillip, who sees the world with a child-like innocence. Treat, tempestuous and full of anger, does not accept Harold’s parental role so easily. The fundamental theme in Orphans is the male suppression of inner life that results in cycles of violence. Ultimately, Harold's arrival urges both brothers to question their relationship to one another, their relationship to the past, and their relationship to the patterns of living they have inhabited for the years before meeting Harold.
What drew you to this project? As a director .. as an artist…
Oftentimes, when reading a play, I have a more difficult time connecting to it than if I were to see a production of it. For me the language, the story, comes alive when it is an auditory and visual experience, when I am actually present in the theater with the actors. I had a completely different experience with Orphans.
The first time I read Orphans, the characters were so clear to me; the story didn’t feel like a story, but like a lived circumstance I was privy to. I also remember experiencing a kind of chill-like feeling when I read “curtain” on the page, and my time with Treat, Phillip, and Harold had come to an end.
To me, the sign of a really good production is not when you leave the theatre and speak (logically) about how interesting all of the elements of the production were. Rather, a production is effective when you are discussing the characters, the story, as if they were people you had actually just met, events you had just witnessed. When I finished reading Orphans, I didn’t break down how it was a “well-made” play, but kept thinking about how Treat and Phillip will move on from this experience, what will change for them, whether they will pull away from each other, or learn to lean on each other.
What is so exciting to me about theatre, and specifically the process involved in creating theater, is how explorational it is. While the cast and crew are all working toward something we are ready to share with an audience, what I wanted most during this process (and in choosing to direct Orphans in the first place) was to be able to have a dedicated amount of time to explore this play out loud, on its feet, with a group of really talented and dedicated actors (Max Newman as Phillip, Joey Rothstein as Treat, Brian Reese as Harold). I have learned, from this experience, that it is not my job to impose my vision on every actor and designer, but to create an environment in which we can all collaborate, can all bring our own ideas, experiences, and thoughts on the magic of this play to life.
Why Now? What about this play needs a 2026 audience?
What initially compelled me to do this play in 2026 is the anger that has characterized young men in this country recently. Treat is very much that archetype to me. He is angry, but doesn’t really have someone specific to be angry at. So he projects it onto Phillip, onto Harold, onto men he meets in the streets of Philadelphia.
I think this play is so important right now because it ultimately asks its characters, and in turn, its audience members, to look inward. Instead of placing blame on someone else, it asks you to examine your own feelings, examine the uncomfortable emotions bubbling under the surface.
In the world of this play, Treat, though extremely resistant, does not simply get to project all of his rage onto others; Harold, as well as Phillip, push him to investigate his feelings, why he can’t control them, where they are stemming from in the first place. This play is needed in 2026 because it doesn’t let us (specifically, young men) off the hook. It encourages the healthy expression of emotions, and the need to rely on others to get through those difficult emotions.
What do you hope audiences take away/ what do you hope the spectators leave with?
The first word that comes to mind when I think of Orphans is interconnection. As an audience member, what excites me about a piece of narrative art is when I don’t know exactly how to feel at the end.
It is easy to see Treat as a villain, to see Phillip as our hero. But I don’t believe this play is that simple. Treat lives in a world of buried emotion; both Treat and Phillip no longer have a father or a mother. Treat has, in his own way, taken care of Phillip, but has also been aggressive, manipulative, and even violent towards him. Treat has gone as far as to convince Phillip that it is unsafe for him to go outside.
However, Orphans is not a portrait of a hero defeating a villain, but a reckoning with what happens when you let overwhelming feelings of pain, grief, and loss go unattended to. Treat may be an antihero in some regard, but he is also filled with so much pain (manifested throughout the play physically) that he doesn’t know what to do with. An acting teacher once told me that what is expressed as anger on the surface is often a symptom of something much deeper.
It is my hope that audience members leave with a sliver of empathy (no matter how difficult this may be) for all of the characters in the play, to see versions of themselves in Treat, Phillip, and Harold. I want audience members to examine what it means to live in this grey area, to reckon with the complications of morality, of relationships, and of justice that appear in this play as much as in our daily lives.
What? Seminar by Theresa Rebeck
Who? Walker Schneckenberger
With? Starring Daniel Baesler, Malia Varela, Henry Alper, Luke Wyngarden, Alicia Steinmann, and Olivia Geimer
When? Iati Theatre on February 26 & March 1
PROMO CODE: FKC25
Talk to me about your play? What is your play about/ summarizing the plays' pressing themes?
Theresa Rebeck’s Seminar confronts the complicated relationship between the self and the art that we create. The play begins in Kate’s living room, coated with the desperate fantasy of an amateur writer in New York City and follows four aspiring writers as they transition from academia to the real world. In an attempt to better themselves as artists, the students hire the renowned author and editor, Leonard, in hopes that he will guide them on the path of reaching their full potential. Their expectations, however, face a rude awakening when they realize that Leonard is a self obsessed, egotistical asshole (for lack of better words). For the rest of the play, the students struggle to balance the triple edged sword of consumption, production, and identity without falling victim to that vast and swirling void of losing oneself. This is a play about fear, uncertainty, self-confidence, and above all else, the danger of power. The power of art, and the danger of art, and the bravery one must have to make art anyway.
What drew you to this project? As a director .. as an artist…
This play means so much to me because I feel that I am in a very similar position to many of these characters. As a recent graduate, I find myself often sitting in the uncomfortable uncertainty that is my own future. At this point in my life, I am trying to be unafraid of the unknown, failing, and pursuing what I love anyway, however scared I might be. This play is all about being brave. We are living in uncertain times culturally where many of us decide to take sanctuary in our creative outlets. Every character in this play is doing exactly that, and the text of this play is layered with all the complicated human emotions that we are all so familiar with. It’s depressing, funny, invigorating, inspiring, sad, and there’s a lust that exists within it for life and experience that transfers into the characters lust for one another that I find so truthful. Giving ourselves permission to be human in every capacity of the word is one of the most difficult voyages that we can take, but how lucky are we to be able to do so on stage.
Why Now? What about this play needs a 2026 audience?
The world is a convoluted place that can absolutely be beautiful, however lately it more often leaves us feeling frustrated, helpless, and uninspired. When those feelings begin to seep into our creative sanctuaries and become corrupted by the monsters of self-doubt, it’s difficult not to cling to our artistic identity so tightly that we end up choking it. That, I believe, is what every single character in the play is grappling with: how to let it go, how to let it breathe. It’s a lesson that I think everyone can take something away from. During these dark times, a pencil, a paintbrush, a keyboard, or whatever brings a person solace, can make all the difference to bringing yourself and the world some peace, and hopefully, inspire others to do the same.
What do you hope audiences take away/ what do you hope the spectators leave with?
The audience will walk away with a sense of reassurance that they are not alone in their struggles. We all have a judge that exists within us, and although that judge primarily exists as a defense mechanism to protect us, it can often get in our way and prevent us from living our full potential. I hope to leave the audience not with the answers, but with the questions they can ask themselves in service of letting their own art breathe and take on a life of its own, so that they can, in turn, breathe a little easier.