ACT Theatre

Past

‘Buzzer’ will Get You Talking

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Buzzer by Tracy Scott Wilson and directed by Anita Montgomery is one of a cluster of plays this winter that hold a mirror and magnifying class up to their audiences on the fraught territory of race, class, sexuality, and property rights. Jackson (Andrew Lee Creech) has found a renovated condo in his former neighborhood to buy. He invites his white girlfriend Suzy (played by Chelsea LaValley) to move in with him. Apparently the relationship hadn’t gone to that level before because she hesitates a moment before agreeing. No sooner than they finish unpacking boxes than Don (Spencer Hamp) arrives. He’s white and Jackson’s best friend who is making his 8th or 9th try to rehabilitate

Past

Mr. Burns, a post-electric play

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Mr. Burns, a post-electric play opens with the kind of disaster we have been fearing since Chernobyl. After a nationwide power failure causes a chain of nuclear meltdowns across the United States, a group of survivors crowd around a fireplace and recount their favorite episodes of The Simpsons in an attempt to stray away from the destruction around them. From there, the play leaps seven years into the future, where theatre troupes put on live productions of television shows in an effort to recapture the televised media that was lost when the grid shut down. Fast forward seventy-five years later, and the last act takes us to a far-off future in which pop culture and media have warped and twisted together until the theatre of the future becomes a semblance of a Greek epic opera revolving around the Cape Feare episode of The Simpsons.

Past

Bloomsday-An ACT World Premiere

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Playwright Steven Dietz enjoys a fruitful relationship with the ACT. Bloomsday is his 11th play to be taken on by the Seattle troupe and its world premiere is a gem. The premise is simple: a middle aged man experiences some “time slippage” enabling him to return to his past and encourage his younger self not to let that special girl get away. The setting is Dublin, the girl is a tour guide and the time is 35 years ago. A fun idea for sure, but what enables this work to soar is the exquisite language (a bit of it borrowed from James Joyce) employed by Dietz.

Past

Sound

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      Restoring a sense or reinforcing audism? Co-presented with 2012 Gregory Award winner Azeotrope, and directed by Desdemona

Past

Sandbox Radio-Spring Fever

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Join in the Fever

One of the big questions I have about Sandbox Radio is: Why ever isn’t it broadcast by NPR? Although Leslie Law, the MC of this Seattle treasure, answered my question, I’m still in the dark!!!!!!

Past

ACT Celebrates Its 50th Birthday with Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

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The performing area is dominated by a tousled bed. What happens and more importantly doesn’t happen there will be the focus of the next three hours of ACT’s stirring revival of Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. The sixty-year old classic features the turmoil of Brick and Maggie’s unhappy marriage, wonderfully brought to life by Broadway stars Brandon O’Neill and Laura Griffith. While Brick’s struggle with his homosexuality may seem dated and merely quaint today, the couples’ fight to find a survivable path through their lives is as captivating as it must have been when ACT featured the play in its inaugural year.

Past

Fail Better-Beckett Move UMO

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Existence is too Serious to take Seriously

UMO Ensemble opened a performance featuring text from Samuel Beckett’s the Unnamable, physical theatre and music in the Eulalie Scandiuzzi Space at ACT theatre on April 9th.

Beckett is an extremely difficult author to stage because he writes non-linear confusing novels and plays whose humor that often gets lost because the subject matter deals with the most basic existential question: to go on living or not to go on living. As a result, it is often performed ponderously, tediously and at a snails pace so that the audience is never engaged.

Past

Fail Better—Beckett As a Circus Act

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The UMO Ensemble gave themselves the task of discovering the essence of Beckett by focusing on his prose. The results are up and running at the ACT Theatre downtown. Written by Maria Glanz and Lyam White and directed by Elizabeth Klob, UMO found the genius both in Beckett and themselves. The mash-up sparkles.

Past

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike–ACT Serves Up a Winner

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With Vanya, and Sonia and Masha and Spike we find Christopher Durang an assured, wonderfully entertaining playwright, running at full throttle. In this 2013 Tony Award Winner he has blended Chekhovian deep characters with his trademark whimsical absurd humor and startlingly fresh insights about today’s America. Director Kurt Beattie has assembled a fantastic cast to bring this all alive.

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