The life of Countess Elizabeth Bathory- the historical noblewoman accused of bathing in young girl’s blood so she could live forever young becomes a supernatural tale both creepy and creepily funny in the hands of the playwright of “Kittens in a Cage” & “The Underneath”.

Kelleen Conway Blanchard lends her unique voice to the story of Elizabeth Bathory, the Hungarian Countess fabled to be one of the inspirations behind vampire lore. Bathory is rumored to have killed anywhere from 60 to 600 young woman and bathed in their blood to preserve her youth.

This fictional account follows the countess from her happy marriage to the fierce warrior Ferenc to her conviction and death bricked up within the walls of her castle. Along the way it explores her possible motivations for the sadistic murders of which she stands accused.

Landing solidly on the dark side of dark comedy, Blood Countess still employs plenty of Kelleen Conway Blanchard’s trademark humor and linguistic gymnastics. This historical horror story is filled with dead birds, headless soldiers, eel pies, and pailfulls of blood.

“Hearts Are Monsters, a loose riff on Hamlet, has a style that hovers somewhere between
John Waters, Daniel Waters (Heathers), and Jack Hill (Switchblade
Sisters, Foxy Brown), but Kelleen Conway Blanchard’s world-premiere
script bristles with dense, dirty intelligence, and the jokes come
thick and fast. – The Stranger

America. Somewhere in the middle. The Ledbetters are a typical family – if "typical" includes a mother, Ruby, with a beehive hairdo, who chain-smokes through her tracheotomy-hole; her one-eyed daughter, Lucinda, former "pork queen of two counties", who wrestles alligators for fun; and her son, Stu Lionel, who – well, let's just say he's super nice, if a bit slow. But, when 17 mailmen go missing, at the same time the Sheriff comes a-courting, things are liable to get a little complicated. Love can be kind of funny that way.

Two Victorian swindlers peddle Spiritualism to upper class mourners. Using séances which include table rapping, table tipping, automatic writing, levitation, and other “communications” with departed spirits; these hucksters make their fortune pretending to re-unite wealthy people with their long lost loved ones. Things get complicated and horrible and down right bloody when they accidentally raise a demon. Will they defeat the demon before it brings forth a legion of seven-headed snake monsters to swallow humanity? Maybe.
Cast Ages: 6-9th grade (12-15 year olds)

A creepy family horror play.