Work samples

  • The Maids - 5 Minute Excerpt
    The Maids, directed by Ric Royer. Psychic Readings Co's version of Jean Genet's The Maids. Gaudy, grotesque, rough and raw, our version of The Maids offers a creepier, darker and more and sinister aesthetic (with a gloppy sugary twist) than our usual work.
  • Fête of Mistakes - 3 Minute Excerpt
    Video from Fete of Mistakes, performed at Incubator Arts (NYC), Silent Barn (NYC and Le Mondo (Baltimore). Directed by Ric Royer, with sound by G Lucas Crane. In The Fête of Mistakes, the Psychic Readings Co constructs an abstract fairground littered with the overwhelmingness of despair and the sustained tension of hopefulness. It’s never really made clear, but I think the play takes place in Niagara Falls: The city so depressed it jumped over itself.
  • Coincidental Hour tree dance
    I also do "this". Coincidental Hour. https://coincidentalhour.com/ It's every type of show wrapped in one. Dance, comedy, music, talk show, game show, horror and children's variety hour.

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About Ric

Baltimore City - Bromo Tower Arts District
Ric Royer is a writer, performer, performer of writings and writer of performances.
Ric is the founder and Artistic Director of the Psychic Readings Co, a performance collective that has entertained, frightened, and confused audiences with their interdisciplinary hysterics since 1999. The company has produced their strange brand of challenging and original theatre work which has been staged at various venues in the U.S. and Europe, including the Ontological-Hysteric… more
View Ric's Resume
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The Fête of Mistakes; A Sublimated Sideshow of Everyday Brutality and Sweets

In The Fête of Mistakes, Psychic Readings Co constructs an abstract fairground littered with the overwhelmingness of despair and the sustained tension of hopefulness.
It’s never really made clear, but I think the play takes place in Niagara Falls: the city so depressed it jumped over...itself. Beneath Niagara Falls hides the Cave of the Winds, the humbug attraction that blows life into the lungs of the greatest sideshow of lies called The Fête of Mistakes! It’s a love/horror story about exploitation. Or rather, a musical about the insidiousness of capitalism. Get in line to taste the sugary goodness of the American Dream! [Note: the play ends in a gruesome demolition derby where everyone dies]
Fête, written and directed by Ric Royer, has been presented three times: Ontological Hysteric Theatre (NYC, 2012), Silent Barn (NYC 2014) and Le Mondo (Baltimore, 2016)
Set design: Xander Marro and Emma Reaves
Sound design: G Lucas Crane

  • Ric rejects the treat
    Ric rejects the treat
    Ric is tempted by a sweet sweet zeppole. photo by Grace Hoellander
  • Dance of the Long Armed Lady
    Dance of the Long Armed Lady
    Fiona Crowley as "The Long Armed Lady"
  • Cave Of The Winds by Ric Royer
    Song from The Fete of Mistakes. Written and performed by Ric Royer
  • Fete intro
    Fete intro
    Ric Royer and G Lucas Crane. photo by Dave Iden.
  • Demo Derby begins
    Demo Derby begins
    Ric in the Fete of Mistakes Demolition Derby!
  • Ghost cars in the Demo Derby
    Ghost cars in the Demo Derby
    The glow-in-the-dark demo derby begins, pitting two lovers against each other in a head-to-head face-off!
  • Tragic ending
    Tragic ending
    The Long Armed Lady perishes! Better luck next time!
    •

    • Garbage, Death and the City of Baltimore

    A play inspired by Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s “Garbage, the City and Death”.
    Adapted and directed by Ric Royer.

    Named “Best Play” of 2015, City Paper Best of Baltimore
    This was the premier production at Psychic Readings, a performance space in the Bromo Arts District opened by the Psychic Readings Co in 2015. "Garbage" was inspired both by Fassbinder's play as well as the sci-fi novel Dhalgren, by Samuel Delaney. The play takes place in a futuristic Baltimore, where the city is found abandoned by those with the means of leaving. What is left behind are the presumed "problems" that are blamed for the city's downfall: the poor, the addicted, the pimps, prostitutes and criminals who build a new foundation for the broken metropolis. Just as the outcasts begin to rebuild their inherited land, those who had abandoned them - developers, speculators, predatory landlords and the people who protect them (police, government...) - return to reclaim "their" city after watching from afar. 
    This piece was performed before any renovations had occurred in our rented property at 219 Park Ave. Our set was the work of decades of neglect from the neglegent property owner. A year later, my outcast theatre collective has invested thousands of hours and dollars into the building. Some day, perhaps, a neglegent landlord, developer or the city itself, may come along and inherit "their" property too.

    • Garbage
      Garbage
      Michael Farley enjoys being waterboarded by Admiral Grey and co.
    • Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves
      Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves
      Admiral Grey and Nicollete LeFaye duet together
    • Ric Royer and Adam Endres
      Ric Royer and Adam Endres
      Cop and city official in a deep kiss
    •

    • My Sincerest Apologies, Victor Frankenstein

    I was obsessed with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein for about a year and made three pieces about it. This is one. MSA,VF is (the description of) an epic blockbuster featuring sexy actors, manly stage-hands (actual ex-boxers!), ghosts, and hilarious conjoined twins! In this version of Frankenstein, which has very little if anything to do with Frankenstein, Frankenstein offers a public show of erotic apology for falling so deeply in love with beauty that he initiated a sexual relationship with aesthetics itself.

    Performed at AS220 (Providence, 2011), 14 Karat Cabaret (Baltimore, 2012) and Bushwick Star (NYC, 2011)

    • Ric Royer - My Sincerest
      An abridged version of the piece, performed at the CATCH Series at Bushwick Star in NYC, 2011
    •

    The Failures

    Director: Ric Royer 
    Written by Ric Royer and Peter Mills Weiss. 

    Billed as “an in-depth look at     what makes failures fail and how YOU can achieve success through their ineptitude and misery”, The Failures is a campy horror/musical/comedy that irreverently comments on insidious everyday structures where the success of an individual relies on the failure or oppression of another. In the play, an audience member (played by Jon Swift) is tortured any time the performers do anything well. Eventually, he’s tortured anyway.

    The Failures has been performed at Psychic Readings (Baltimore) and at the Exponential Festival in NYC.
    • Failures poster
      Failures poster
      Poster by Carl Dunn
    • Ric as Ric
      Ric as Ric
      From the opening number
    • Grand Finale
      Grand Finale
      From the finale scene of the play. The Failure's final act: to die onstage.
    •

    • The Maids

    Psychic Readings Co's version of Jean Genet's The Maids
    Adapted and directed by Ric Royer.  
    Featuring Carly J. Bales, Nicollette LeFaye and Kyra Evelyn.
    Gaudy, grotesque, rough and raw, our version of The Maids offers a creepier, darker and more and sinister aesthetic (with a gloppy sugary twist) than our usual work.
    From the program: This is not Jean Genet’s, “The Maids”. Genet’s play, published and produced in 1947, has found a recent resurgence on stage and is widely available in print if you’d like to read it.
    Our play, The Maids, might have been Genet’s play at some point, but even the same action performed twice is not identical, let alone performed endlessly, played on loop for nearly 70 years. The rich have become richer, the poor bigger and weaker, the rituals more obscure, the fetishes further removed from their psychological, sexual and/or superstitious roots…

    We don’t even know what has become of Genet’s play. We’ve lost the plot. The code to interpret the games our maids play has been rubbed smoothed by supplicating hands. Details from the game Genet set in motion have been washed away by the eternal repetition performed in a single room, in a single act. Genet’s “whirligig of being and appearance” has spun out of control, pieces of his text have flung away like accessories in a manic cosplay, and the remembrance of the outside world is failing. Gone is the milkman, the monsieur, and perhaps even the madame herself. Most disturbing of all, the maids remain. Unable to exit through death or imprisonment, the maids continue to act out their roles of servitude to a master who has long departed, leaving a power system forever rippling in the wake of her train.

    • Tea for Madame
      Tea for Madame
      Nicollete LeFaye and Carly Bales. Photo by Noah Scialom
    • The servant
      The servant
      Carly J Bales, oozed.
    • The Madame
      The Madame
      Kyra Evelyn. Photo by Noah Scialom
    • Dangerous Games
      Dangerous Games
      The maids play out their fantasies. photo by Noah Scialom
    •

    • Late Night Theatre Series

    The Late Night Theatre Series presents rare and/or unpublished and/or original and/or indefinable works, with a touch of that late night feeling. All shows in the Late Night Series take place at Psychic Readings, at 219 Park Ave in the Bromo Arts District. Performances start at 10pm and tickets are between $6 and $12.
    The second season is currently underway, with recent shows by Peter Redgrave and Zack Trebino.
    The first season of Late Night at Psychic Readings featured six short plays from guest directors, produced by Ric Royer's Psychic Readings Co.

    Late Night Theatre Season #1:

    “Smallest Something Not Quite Nothing”; written by Thalia Field and directed by Bonnie Jones 
    January 6 & 7 

    “Hold Me While I’m Craven”; A theatrical montage inspired by the Kuchar brothers. Directed by Lexie Mountain (directorial debut)
    February 12-14

    “Cleveland”; a play by Mac Wellman, directed by Carly J. Bales (directorial debut)
    March 4-6

    “Salaam Salome” an adaptation of Salome by the Snake in the Boot Collective,  directed by Admiral Grey (Philadelphia)
    April 15-17

    “A Flood of Emotions”, an original piece written and directed by Theresa Columbus.
    June 16 & 17

    “The Purple Flower” (1928); written by Marita Bonner, directed by Rosalind Cauthen
    July 1-3

    • Hold Me While I’m Craven”
      "Hold Me While I’m Craven”
      Performance still from “Hold Me While I’m Craven”, directed by Lexie Mountain. Video taken by Mark Colegrove
    • Cleveland
      "Cleveland"
      Cleveland, a play by Mac Wellman. Directed by Carly Bales.
    • Late Night poster
      Late Night poster
      Poster by Carl Dunn.
    • Not Today Salome
      Not Today Salome
      From "Not Today Salome", an adaptation of Salome, directed by Admiral Grey
    •