The Arsonists

Strawdog Artistic Associate Matt Hawkins (Red Noses, Big Love) returns to Strawdog to helm The Arsonists, a parable about society’s capacity to accommodate the very thing that destroys it. Bidemann (Rob Kauzlaric), a prominent businessman, is living in a city that has been the scene of mysterious fires. When two strangers ask him for shelter on a rainy evening, Bidemann does what all good citizens should do and offers them his home. As the evidence begins to mount indicating his guests are the men setting the fires, Bidemann must choose what to do, turn out his guests or help them light the match.

The Arsonists, originally called the The Firebugs (was first published in German as Herr Biedermann und die Brandstifter, and sometimes translated in English as Biedermann and the Firebugs), is one of Frisch’s most enduring plays and written in the years following World War II. It was first conceived of in a short entry in one of Frisch’s diaries and the devised for a