Rick Bayless: Actor?

By Chuck Sudo in Arts & Entertainment on Sep 20, 2011 4:00PM

We know most everything Rick Bayless attaches his name to turns into a group of satisfied diners. But will his magic touch translate to the theater?

That's what Lookingglass Theatre is hoping for. The theater company announced Bayless will write and star in Cascabel as part of their 2012 season.

The play will feature Bayless as a chef in a Mexican boarding house in the 1940s, pining for the love of a woman with no appetite while the supporting characters flip, walk tightropes and stumble around him.

Lookingglass' description of Cascabel reads like an update of Like Water for Chocolate without the mystical sexual connotations. But with Tony Hernandez, creator of Lookingglass' hit circus Hephaestus and a playbook by Heidi Stillman, author of award-winning productions Hard Times and The Bothers Karamazov, in tow, Bayless could be redefining the phrase "dinner and a show."

Lookingglass is calling Cascabel "the culinary experience of the year." Tickets go on sale to Lookingglass subscribers Sept. 27 for the play, which will run from March 21 - Apr. 22, 2012. If any tickets are left for the general public to buy, they'll go on sale Oct. 18.