Loosely inspired by the chairs from Van Gogh’s Arles series, Chair(s) centers on an isolated and worn-down man who brings a chair in from the curb. Strangely, the chair begins to multiply into two chairs, then three and so on…

Moving from curiosity to fear, our protagonist must adjust his sense of reality and humanity in order to resolve this crisis with his furniture — before it drives him crazy or runs him out of his home.

A character study riddled with intrigue, terror and the need for simple pleasures, join this speculative journey of what could happen if your furniture suddenly had a goal that had nothing to do with making you comfortable.

Chair(s) director Jon Stout is driven to mix the mundane with extraordinary. Drawing inspiration from the mercurial jumble of ideas and observations from daily life, he searches for meaning by placing rather ordinary characters in extravagant situations, allowing them to reveal their hearts and horrors as they struggle to understand their new reality.

Jon Stout works creatively in the worlds of film, media and print. His films include the Eisner award-winning Morning Coffee (co-created with Wendy Barnett), the Kafka-esque From the Office, and the creepy tale of a doomed starlet, OLLYWOO, which was invited to the Locarno Film Festival. He produced the award-winning short film, Apartment 206, an ingenious take on two ghosts trapped in limbo (Best Short Film, San Diego Film Festival, among many other honors). His feature screenplay, Ashes to Ashes, was a semi- and quarter-finalist, respectively, in the Zoetrope and Austin Film Festival competitions.

A graduate of UC Berkeley and the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, he has been honored with several production awards, including the Lew and Edie Wasserman Film Production Award.

Always game for high- or low-brow experiences, he can be found observing Angelinos in their native California habitat, trundling the coastal bike path and hunting for ideas (whether they are in season or not).

Samantha Henderson authors fiction and poetry, creating a world where that bump you hear in the night could just as easily be a human invading the comfortable home of a werewolf as it could be an errant piece of furniture prowling a man’s lonely apartment. Her works spring to life because they are infused with a human truth that makes these skewed landscapes — and the characters that inhabit them — sympathetic, intelligent and interesting.

Samantha Henderson’s fiction and poetry has been published in numerous markets, including the professional markets Realms of Fantasy, Strange Horizons, Chizine, and Weird Tales.  She is widely published in the speculative small press, and has received six Rhysling nominations for her poetry.  Her work has appeared in Prime Book’s Fantasy: The Best of 2005 and is upcoming in the same publisher’s Horror: The Best of 2006 and Fantasy Magazine Anthology.  

Samantha Henderson lives in Southern California with corgis, cats and rabbits. She also has a lovely family, works as a church office coordinator, and writes — often on napkins.

For a full bibliography and current updates on her works, visit www.samanthahenderson.com.