The Last Supper: A Grand Guignol Love Story
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Presented by Round The Bend Theater, with The CENTER for Performing Arts at Rhinebeck.
THE LAST SUPPER: A GRAND GUIGNOL LOVE STORY
By David Simpatico
Saturday, November 7, 2026 · 7:30 PM
$15 fundraiser. Proceeds support efforts to mount The Last Supper as a full production in the Hudson Valley.
Join Round The Bend Theater for this second staged reading at The CENTER for Performing Arts at Rhinebeck.
As civilization collapses, seven wildly different survivors gather for one impossible dinner.
Edgar has decided to die on his own terms, and a death doula has been brought in to help him make that final passage. But the evening takes an unexpected turn when the dead begin rising outside.
Political zealots, believers, skeptics, lovers, old gods, new machines and zombies all demand a seat at the table. Some want to eat. Some want to preach. Some want to survive.
Love, democracy and zombies collide in David Simpatico’s darkly comic Grand Guignol play about individual choice, collective survival, and what we owe one another when everything falls apart.
About the playwright
David Simpatico’s career highlights include the book and stage adaptation of Disney’s High School Musical; The Screams of Kitty Genovese, a Jonathan Larson Award recipient, with music by Will Todd; and Garden of Light, a libretto for choral symphony with composer Aaron Jay Kernis.
His musical adaptation of Twelve Angry Men, with music and lyrics by Michael Holland, premiered at Theater Latte Da in Minneapolis in June 2022, directed by Peter Rothstein, and later played at Asolo Rep in Sarasota, Florida. His grand opera The Life and Death(s) of Alan Turing, with music by Justine F. Chen, premiered at Chicago Opera Theater in March 2023, also directed by Peter Rothstein.
He is currently adapting Wally Lamb’s She’s Come Undone with co-bookwriter Darrah Cloud and composer-lyricist Michael Holland. He is also working on That Hellbound Train, a new jazz opera with composer Lisa DeSpain, based on the short story by Robert Bloch. His play Ex-Gay Bar received Honorable Mention in the Carlo Annoni International Playwriting Award and the inaugural Voices For Change Action Grant from ArtsWestchester. His oratorio adaptation of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, with a score by Will Todd, received its first production with Opera Holland Park at Sinfonia Smith Square in London in December 2024, 2025 and 2026.
David is an alumnus of the Composer Librettist Development Program at American Lyric Theater. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Southern New Hampshire University and an undergraduate degree from Northwestern University, where he studied playwriting under Linda Jenkins. He has received support from the Edward Albee Foundation, Millay Colony, NY Theatre Workshop, Eugene O’Neill Foundation and Rhinebeck Writer’s Retreat. David is a member of the Dramatists Guild and, with playwright Darrah Cloud, co-founded Howl Playwrights in Rhinebeck, NY, where he lives with his husband and muse, Robert C. Strickstein.
About Round The Bend Theater
Since 2021, Round The Bend Theater has presented new work by Hudson Valley playwrights. Now in its sixth season, the theater has presented over 100 plays in many venues and is looking forward to moving into full productions of plays it has presented in its 2027 season.
https://www.roundthebendtheatre.org/
Howl Playwrights is a Hudson Valley community of playwrights dedicated to developing new work through readings, workshops and regular meetings. Founded and co-curated by playwrights David Simpatico and Darrah Cloud, Howl has presented the work of local writers for more than a decade.
In 2020, Dramatist magazine described Howl as “a bright spot in the Hudson Valley Region” and noted its “robust and active” community of playwrights.
Simpatico’s The Last Supper grows out of that larger Hudson Valley theater community and is being developed toward a full production with Round The Bend Theater.