The decade of the 2020s started with ACT being dark for the entire 2020 mainstage season. While closed
for the pandemic, there was a change in leadership as Anita Shah moved in as Managing Director. The
first play after the pandemic closure was Hotter Than Egypt, written by Core Company member Yussef el Guindi
- a world premiere.
productions
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2011
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Vanities: A New Musical (2011)
In Vanities: A New Musical, you’ll set off on a life-affirming journey through the turbulent ’60s to the late ’80s and discover how three friends face life’s defining moments: growing up, getting older and getting over it. Vanities is a funny and poignant look at three women who discover that, even in 30 years of rapidly changing times, the one thing they can rely on is each other. Based on the original play Vanities by Jack Heifner.
The Prisoner of Second Avenue (2011)
Heat waves. Garbage strikes. Noisy neighbors. Burglars. No place dishes it out quite like New York City, and with his job hanging by a thread, Mel Edison is in no mood to grin and bear it. Sparkling with Simon’s usual wit and fueled by a still-resonant anger at the dehumanizing effects of modern city life, this comedy classic pits Mel and his steadfast wife Edna against an assault by 1970s Manhattan—and it’s anybody’s guess who’ll win.
Pilgrims Musa and Sheri in the New World (2011)
When Musa, an Egyptian cab driver who’s been in America less than a year, falls for Sheri, a sassy American waitress, his life takes unexpected and delightfully complicated turns. This sexy, "very now" world premiere comedy by Seattle playwright Yussef El Guindi is full of unabashed sweetness and goofy charm, and reminds us that we are all “immigrants” with far more connecting than separating us.
In the Next Room, or the vibrator play (2011)
In a prim upper class Victorian home, a gentleman doctor has innocently invented a most extraordinary and mysterious device for treating "hysteria." When his increasingly despondent wife overhears the strange sounds emanating from the operating theatre and sees patients leaving in the pink of health, she is compelled to investigate - even if it means throwing over domesticity for desire. Ranging from the tender to the farcical, this smart comedy ponders marriage and intimacy, and how electricity came along to fuse them.
Mary Stewart (2011)
A contemporary take on a classic masterpiece, the astonishingly relevant Mary Stuart examines power, passion and politics in the lives of two famous royal cousins. Amidst espionage, attempted assassinations, and prison breaks, a tragic crisis confronts both women with impossibly difficult decisions. Will Mary renounce her claim to the crown? Can Elizabeth free Mary without jeopardizing her throne? It's a thrilling episode from the past that strikes at the core of our contemporary selves.
Double Indemnity (2011)
Lust, intrigue, and cliffhanging twists amp up this much-loved crime tale, which Billy Wilder also adapted for his classic noir film. In the dusty, amoral Los Angeles of the 1930s, discontented insurance agent Walter Huff encounters temptations too great to resist and embarks on a dark journey to escape his life. Double Indemnity is a suspenseful and profound consideration of the materialistic and sexual cravings of Depression-era America, rendered in a delicious new voice by David Pichette and R. Hamilton Wright.