The  are a theatre company that produces work of no moral judgment, collaborating exclusively with American playwrights whose works are not concerned with the principals of right or wrong, good or bad, but rather full or empty. We are radical in both style of character and narrative, challenging artistic conventions, and defying political correctness. An AMORALISTS production is not an experience that you can stick under your seat and forget.

Our work goes home with you.

Our plays have the power to unsettle!

November 1, 2007

Now Playing by Leonard Jacobs (ljacobs@backstage.com)

The Pied Pipers of the Lower East Side

A theatre company called the Amoralists... Something tells you the work will provoke. Derek Ahonen, an actor, playwright, and co-founder of the group, doesn't dissappoint. Inquire about the genesis of the company, formed in November 2006, and he launches a pointed fusillade against aesthetic laziness in contemporary New York Theatre: "We wanted a company using narrative again-really kind of raw characters and good dialogue. We've been disgusted by a lot of Off- and Off-Off-Broadway: souless, gutless work without heart; work overwrought with heavy-handed, pretentious symbolism."

Dive into the Amoralists' website (www.theamoralists.com) and you can sniff out the roots of Ahonen's stridency. It's the same rabble-rousing theatricality that fueled the Living Theatre, that made Sam Shepard's plays, especially the early ones, a theatre of brutality that electrified audiences. Ahonen serves as an executive producer; his partners-all colleagues from their training days at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts- are James Kautz (Artistic Director) and Matthew Pilieci (Executive Producer). The Amoralists' newest effort is Ahonen's The Pied Pipers of the Lower East Side.

Read the full interview here.