Violence and betrayal, angels and prophets, villains, kings…and chickens. Who Would Be King swings from absurd buffoonery to high tragedy, with kinetic physicality, silliness, swords, and a live synthwave score. Boston’s Liars & Believers brings this epic tale about the good, the great, and the chasm between.

$20 / 85 minutes

“I saw something extraordinary at OBERON last night…” – New England Theatre Geek

“…the buffoonery is delightful… ingenious score… fight choreography is stellar…. Liars and Believers make this challenging journey from the sunny to the sinister with impressive ease.” – The Arts Fuse

“It’s gorgeous, immersive, ambient spectacle…. Who Would Be King is a silly, subversive show with something profound at its core, a sharp wit and a big heart…” – The New Worcester Spy

“Liars and Believers draws once again on their bulging theatrical tool kit…. This is a show with a heart, a mind, and red plastic noses all around.” – Edge Media Network

“the region’s most innovative artists” – Boston Survival Guide

Liars & Believers combines movement and dance, live singing and music, puppetry, mask, clown, spoken text, and any other performance forms in interdisciplinary works that are moving, thought-provoking, and a sensory explosion. Employing artists with a wide array of expertise, we create exciting Performance Events.

Catch Who Would Be King before our New York premiere in March.

Pictured: Rachel Wiese, Jesse Garlick    Credit: Chris McIntosh

Our mission is:
• Create original live performances that move the heart, challenge the mind, and feast the senses
• Explore manifold performance forms
• Expand the audience for live theatrical performance
• Enrich our community

Working through an improvisation-based process, we devised each of our works collaboratively over 10-24 months. Our performers, designers, and writers are all included in our developmental process from the start. Along the way, we share our work-in-progress with our audience, incorporating their feedback into the creation of our work. In our first seven seasons we created nine original productions ranging from a punk-cabaret fairytale and an Americana myth musical, to a family puppet and clown adventure.

Pictured: Jesse Garlick, Rachel Wiese, Veronica Barron, Glen Moore    Credit: Chris McIntosh

We have collaborated with world-renown author Neil Gaiman, steampunk powerhouse Walter Sickert & the Army of Broken Toys, the Boston Circus Guild, plus many dancers, composers, burlesque artists, aerialists, and more. Our shows, Le Cabaret Grimm and Icarus received critical acclaim and awards at the New York Musical Theatre Festival and we were commissioned by the Outside the Box Festival in Boston to create Yellow Bird Chase. The Boston Survival Guide has called us “the region’s most innovative artists” and the New York Times has called our work “inspired.” Having just finished a three-year residency at the American Repertory Theatre’s OBERON, this season we begin a five-year residency at the Boston Center for the Arts. Later this season Liars & Believers will collaborate with Poet’s Theatre on a new production of Beowulf and we’ll premiere a new work about Spring at the Boston Center for the Arts. In March we’ll bring Who Would Be King to New York. Liars & Believers is excited to be in Philly and looks forward to bringing our works to other great theatre cities around the country and the world.

You can learn more here.