Do You Need to Read The Confidence Man?
Three performances – Three nights
Fri – Sun, June 26 – 28 | 7:00pm – 8:00pm
Neill-Cochran House Museum
2310 San Gabriel St, Austin TX
Tickets: $35 General | $25 Museum Member
Performer, playwright and descendent of Herman Melville, Elizabeth Doss “talks back” to The Confidence Man, his last novel published in his lifetime. Set on a steamboat cruising down Mississippi, Doss jumps aboard, probing this text to grapple with her own encounters with “Confidence Men”, not to mention her own flagging confidence, and what in the world Melville is really getting at in his strangest and most provocatively perplexing text. Still in its larval stage, Doss asks, “Do you need to read The Confidence Man?”, or does it deserve its obscurity? This solo performance (hopefully) offers a mixture of insight, ignorance and some stabs at hilarity. Come cheer her on (or boo her off) for three consecutive nights only at the Neill-Cochran House Museum.
Complimentary cocktails will be served for attendees 21 and older.
Playwright/Performer:
Elizabeth Doss is a writer, performer, director and playwright based in Austin, Texas. She is a Co-artistic director of the theatre collective Paper Chairs, which has produced world premieres of her original plays Murder Ballad Murder Mystery, Hillcountry Underbelly, Mast, Poor Herman and Catalina de Erauso. Paper Chairs has also produced her translation/ adaptations of Federico Garcia Lorca’s, The Audience and The Divine Narcissus by Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz.
As a performer she performs with Austin companies including Salvage Vanguard (Cry Pitch Carols, Americamisfit), Rude Mechs (Dionysus in ‘69, B Beaver Animation, Fixing Timon of Athens) Theatre en Bloc (The Totalitarians.) She’s currently developing a new solo work based on Melville’s last published novel: Do You Need to Read the Confidence Man? She recently performed an excerpt of the piece for Frontera Fest which was selected for “Best of the Fest.”
This event runs on all days from Jun 26, 2026 to Jun 28, 2026.Time :7:00pm to8:00pm Timezone: Central Time (US & Canada)