| For many years, John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi (1612) has been my favorite theatrical work. I discovered the play by accident, due to my childhood interest in werewolf lore and lycanthropy, in a book titled The Werewolf Delusion, by Ian Woodward. A section of the book regarding lycanthropy in literature featured a photo from a 70’s London production of The Duchess of Malfi depicting Duke Ferdinand strangling The Duchess. I immediately sought the play out and was immediately drawn in by Webserâ €™s uncompromising autopsy of the darkest side of vengeance, imprisonment and murder. The mentally ill and incestuous Duke Ferdinand became the character that I had always sought to portray and I vowed one day to produce The Duchess of Malfi as a feature film. On January 15th, 2005 we are shooting a 16mm version of a selection of Act III, scene ii in The International Museum of Surgical Science’s “Hall of Immortal’sâ€� statuary. The purpose of this film is to submit in conjunction with a proposal to obtain the funds needed to produce The Duchess of Malfi as a 35mm feature. The play has had countless stage incarnations over several centuries, as well as an audio performance on Caedmon records in 1966 and as a 1972 feature. |


| PRODUCTION INFORMATION |

| Stylistically we are working from several metaphors in a hyperrealist and surreal context: imprisonment, hidden wantonness, sexual obsession, cannibalism and murderous fury. These factors are encompassed in an appropriate quotation from Antonin Artaudâ €™s The Theatre and Its Double, which illustrates the spine of the play: “Like hidden rage, the deadliest plague does not show its symptoms.â€� The style will also reflect a modified period with period dress and settings which are an embodiment of the subtextual intentions of the characters within. Malfi is a prison. Malfi is suffering sans gain --sans redemption. We are all in its court. We are all its hapless courtiers, flowing from the head of a poisoned fountain. |

| NEWS May 20th 2005 The film is finished!! Copies are available by contact us via email. Thanks to everyone involved in its production. I look forward to the next project, which is upcoming in June. Details TBA! I have this night digg'd up a mandrake and am grown mad with it.. --Benjamin Capps |
