Horse Eats Hat (1936, WPA Federal Theatre)

Orson Welles and Edwin Denby’s legendary 1936 avant-garde farcical slapstick extravaganza 'Horse Eats Hat' exploded onto the stage of the historic Maxine Elliott Theatre under the banner of the WPA Federal Theatre Project, running for a record-breaking 111 performances. Based on Eugène Labiche’s classic French bedroom farce *The Italian Straw Hat*, the anarchic plot follows a young bridegroom whose horse accidentally eats a rare millinery hat belonging to a high-society lady, launching a frantic, real-time chase across Paris to locate a replacement to evade her husband. Directed with hyper-kinetic visual scale by a young Orson Welles, the historic production starred Joseph Cotten.