ACT Theatre
Encyclopedia
ACT Theatre is a regional, non-profit theatre organization in Seattle, Washington, USA. Gregory A. Falls (1922–1997) founded ACT in 1965 and served as its first Artistic director
; at the time ACT was founded he was also head of the Drama Department at the University of Washington
. Falls was identified with the theatrical avant garde of the time, and founded ACT because he saw the Seattle Repertory Theatre
as too specifically devoted to classics.
. The building, which also includes the 44 unit, moderate-income Eagles Apartments, is the historic Eagles Auditorium Building
. Previously part of the Washington State Convention and Trade Center
(to which it is connected via internal tunnel), the building was remodeled into theater spaces and apartments and renamed in honor of a major gift from the Kreielsheimer Foundation. There are two mainstage theater spaces, each with a capacity of about 390 seats. The Gregory A. Falls Theatre, located below street level, has a rectangular thrust stage
. Above ground, the former Eagles Auditorium hall (now known as the Allen Theatre) is an arena or "in-the-round" venue.
Complying with landmark ordinances, the Allen Theatre retains the Eagles Auditorium's gilded balcony, ornate ceiling, and crystal chandeliers, though some of this is obscured by the HVAC
and lighting systems. The decision to convert this famous lecture hall and performance venue from a proscenium
stage to theater-in-the-round was, according to Misha Berson, "the most controversial aspect of the renovation". The proscenium stage from which Martin Luther King, Jr.
once spoke, and on which the Grateful Dead
performed, "is now just a painted relic in the background."
The facility also includes the 4539 square feet (421.7 m²) Bullitt Cabaret and several other smaller spaces.
theater." They staged their first performance July 9, 1965. ACT was originally located at in a 454-seat thrust-stage theater in Queen Anne Hall, now home to On the Boards
. Falls remained as artistic director until 1988, when he was succeeded by Jeff Steitzer, then in 1995 by Peggy Shannon.
After a lengthy and difficult search for a larger space, ACT moved into its new Kreielsheimer Place facility in 1996, and presented its first play there on September 1 of that year. However, Shannon's productions at the new facility were not well received by the critics or the public. Shannon resigned in 1997, leaving ACT in debt for the first time in its history, and with subscriptions having fallen from 11,400 in 1996 to 9,000 in 1997. Her successor, Gordon Edelstein
, revived the company's critical and popular reputation, bringing such noted performers as actresses Julie Harris
and Jane Alexander
and singer songwriter Randy Newman
, as well as experimental director Joanne Akalaitis
and composer Phillip Glass. Several ACT premieres went on to successful runs in New York. However, costs rose accordingly, and ACT's debts mounted. In October 2002, ACT made an offer to Robert Egan, producing director at the Mark Taper Forum
in Los Angeles
, to become their new artistic director, but by the time the 2003 season was approaching, ACT had a US$
1.7 million debt and was in no position to honor their offer. They were in serious danger of folding. Subscriptions dropped to 7,500.
Donations (including $500,000 Boeing
chairman Phil Condit), some scaling back, and a successful 2003 season under artistic director Kurt Beattie saved the day, sparing ACT the fate visited upon Seattle's comparably prominent Empty Space
theater in the same period. By the 2006 season, ACT was back to venturesome programming, including Martin McDonagh
's black comedy
The Pillowman
and local writer Elizabeth Heffron's Mitzi's Abortion
.
("The Rep"), it is one of the city's three largest playhouses. ACT's Mainstage has presented many world, American, and West Coast premieres. Numerous productions have gone on to New York City
.
ACT is a member of the League of Resident Theatres
(LORT); the only other Seattle members are Intiman and The Rep. It is also a member of Theatre Puget Sound
, and is a constituent of Theatre Communications Group
. ACT is also a member of the Downtown Seattle Association, Seattle's Convention and Visitors Bureau and Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce.
Artistic director
An artistic director is the executive of an arts organization, particularly in a theatre company, that handles the organization's artistic direction. He or she is generally a producer and director, but not in the sense of a mogul, since the organization is generally a non-profit organization...
; at the time ACT was founded he was also head of the Drama Department at the University of Washington
University of Washington
University of Washington is a public research university, founded in 1861 in Seattle, Washington, United States. The UW is the largest university in the Northwest and the oldest public university on the West Coast. The university has three campuses, with its largest campus in the University...
. Falls was identified with the theatrical avant garde of the time, and founded ACT because he saw the Seattle Repertory Theatre
Seattle Repertory Theatre
Seattle Repertory Theatre is a major regional theatre located in Seattle, Washington, at the Seattle Center. It is a member of Theatre Puget Sound and Theatre Communications Group. Founded in 1963, it is led by Artistic Director Jerry Manning and Managing Director Benjamin Moore...
as too specifically devoted to classics.
Facility
ACT is located in Kreielsheimer Place, at 700 Union Street in Downtown SeattleDowntown Seattle
Downtown is the central business district of Seattle, Washington. It is fairly compact compared to other city centers on the West Coast because of its geographical situation: hemmed in on the north and east by hills, on the west by the Elliott Bay, and on the south by reclaimed land that was once...
. The building, which also includes the 44 unit, moderate-income Eagles Apartments, is the historic Eagles Auditorium Building
Eagles Auditorium Building
The Eagles Auditorium Building is a seven story historic theatre and apartment building in Seattle, Washington. Located at 1416 Seventh Avenue, at the corner of Seventh and Union Street, the Eagles Auditorium building has been the home to ACT Theatre since 1996. It was listed on the National...
. Previously part of the Washington State Convention and Trade Center
Washington State Convention and Trade Center
The Washington State Convention Center is a convention center located next to and over Interstate 5 in downtown Seattle, Washington, adjacent to Freeway Park. Planning for its construction began in 1982; construction began in 1985, and the center opened on June 18, 1988. An expansion that doubled...
(to which it is connected via internal tunnel), the building was remodeled into theater spaces and apartments and renamed in honor of a major gift from the Kreielsheimer Foundation. There are two mainstage theater spaces, each with a capacity of about 390 seats. The Gregory A. Falls Theatre, located below street level, has a rectangular thrust stage
Thrust stage
In theatre, a thrust stage is one that extends into the audience on three sides and is connected to the backstage area by its up stage end. A thrust has the benefit of greater intimacy between performers and the audience than a proscenium, while retaining the utility of a backstage area...
. Above ground, the former Eagles Auditorium hall (now known as the Allen Theatre) is an arena or "in-the-round" venue.
Complying with landmark ordinances, the Allen Theatre retains the Eagles Auditorium's gilded balcony, ornate ceiling, and crystal chandeliers, though some of this is obscured by the HVAC
HVAC
HVAC refers to technology of indoor or automotive environmental comfort. HVAC system design is a major subdiscipline of mechanical engineering, based on the principles of thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, and heat transfer...
and lighting systems. The decision to convert this famous lecture hall and performance venue from a proscenium
Proscenium
A proscenium theatre is a theatre space whose primary feature is a large frame or arch , which is located at or near the front of the stage...
stage to theater-in-the-round was, according to Misha Berson, "the most controversial aspect of the renovation". The proscenium stage from which Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for being an iconic figure in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world, using nonviolent methods following the...
once spoke, and on which the Grateful Dead
Grateful Dead
The Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in 1965 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The band was known for its unique and eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, reggae, country, improvisational jazz, psychedelia, and space rock, and for live performances of long...
performed, "is now just a painted relic in the background."
The facility also includes the 4539 square feet (421.7 m²) Bullitt Cabaret and several other smaller spaces.
History
ACT was founded by Gregory A. Falls in 1965, providing Seattle with "a serious alternative to summer stockSummer Stock
For the article about the theatre genre, see Summer stock theatre.Summer Stock is a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musical made in 1950. The film was directed by Charles Walters and stars Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Eddie Bracken, Gloria DeHaven, Marjorie Main, and Phil Silvers...
theater." They staged their first performance July 9, 1965. ACT was originally located at in a 454-seat thrust-stage theater in Queen Anne Hall, now home to On the Boards
On the Boards
On the Boards is a non-profit contemporary performing arts organization in Seattle, Washington, founded in 1978. Originally located at Washington Hall in the Central District, the organization moved in 1998 to their current location in Lower Queen Anne...
. Falls remained as artistic director until 1988, when he was succeeded by Jeff Steitzer, then in 1995 by Peggy Shannon.
After a lengthy and difficult search for a larger space, ACT moved into its new Kreielsheimer Place facility in 1996, and presented its first play there on September 1 of that year. However, Shannon's productions at the new facility were not well received by the critics or the public. Shannon resigned in 1997, leaving ACT in debt for the first time in its history, and with subscriptions having fallen from 11,400 in 1996 to 9,000 in 1997. Her successor, Gordon Edelstein
Gordon Edelstein
Gordon Edelstein is in his eighth season as Long Wharf Theatre’s Artistic Director. In addition to his work on the world premiere of Athol Fugard’s Have You Seen Us?, Mr. Edelstein will also direct and adapt Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House later in Long Wharf Theatre’s 2009-10 season. In addition, Mr...
, revived the company's critical and popular reputation, bringing such noted performers as actresses Julie Harris
Julie Harris
Julia Ann "Julie" Harris is an American stage, screen, and television actress. She has won five Tony Awards, three Emmy Awards and a Grammy Award, and was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1994, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts. She is a member of the American Theatre Hall of Fame...
and Jane Alexander
Jane Alexander
Jane Alexander is an American actress, author, and former director of the National Endowment for the Arts. Although perhaps best known for playing the female lead in The Great White Hope on both stage and screen, Alexander has played a wide array of roles in both theater and film and has committed...
and singer songwriter Randy Newman
Randy Newman
Randall Stuart "Randy" Newman is an American singer-songwriter, arranger, composer, and pianist who is known for his mordant pop songs and for film scores....
, as well as experimental director Joanne Akalaitis
JoAnne Akalaitis
JoAnne Akalaitis is an American theatre director and a writer and the winner of five Obie Awards for direction and founder of the critically acclaimed Mabou Mines in New York, from which she resigned after twenty years in June 1990.Akalaitis was pre-med and studied philosophy in college...
and composer Phillip Glass. Several ACT premieres went on to successful runs in New York. However, costs rose accordingly, and ACT's debts mounted. In October 2002, ACT made an offer to Robert Egan, producing director at the Mark Taper Forum
Mark Taper Forum
The Mark Taper Forum is a 739 seat thrust stage at the Los Angeles Music Center built by Welton Becket and Associates on the Bunker Hill section of downtown Los Angeles...
in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, to become their new artistic director, but by the time the 2003 season was approaching, ACT had a US$
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
1.7 million debt and was in no position to honor their offer. They were in serious danger of folding. Subscriptions dropped to 7,500.
Donations (including $500,000 Boeing
Boeing
The Boeing Company is an American multinational aerospace and defense corporation, founded in 1916 by William E. Boeing in Seattle, Washington. Boeing has expanded over the years, merging with McDonnell Douglas in 1997. Boeing Corporate headquarters has been in Chicago, Illinois since 2001...
chairman Phil Condit), some scaling back, and a successful 2003 season under artistic director Kurt Beattie saved the day, sparing ACT the fate visited upon Seattle's comparably prominent Empty Space
Empty space
Empty space may refer to:* Outer space, especially the relatively empty regions of the universe outside the atmospheres of celestial bodies* Vacuum, a volume of space that is essentially empty of matter, such that its gaseous pressure is much less than atmospheric pressure* Free space, a perfect...
theater in the same period. By the 2006 season, ACT was back to venturesome programming, including Martin McDonagh
Martin McDonagh
Martin McDonagh is an Irish-British playwright, filmmaker, and screenwriter. Although he has lived in London his entire life, he is considered one of the most important living Irish playwrights.-Life:...
's black comedy
Black comedy
A black comedy, or dark comedy, is a comic work that employs black humor or gallows humor. The definition of black humor is problematic; it has been argued that it corresponds to the earlier concept of gallows humor; and that, as humor has been defined since Freud as a comedic act that anesthetizes...
The Pillowman
The Pillowman
The Pillowman is a 2003 play by Irish playwright Martin McDonagh. It received its first public reading in an early version at the Finborough Theatre, London, in 1995...
and local writer Elizabeth Heffron's Mitzi's Abortion
Mitzi's Abortion
Mitzi's Abortion is a play by a Seattle-based playwright, Elizabeth Heffron. The play dramatizes the journey of a young woman who is advised by her doctor to have a late-term abortion due to anencephaly, a severe birth defect, in her child. The social and cultural conflicts that arise as a result...
.
Stature
Over more than four decades, ACT has established itself as one of Seattle's leading theaters. Along with the Intiman Theatre and Seattle Repertory TheatreSeattle Repertory Theatre
Seattle Repertory Theatre is a major regional theatre located in Seattle, Washington, at the Seattle Center. It is a member of Theatre Puget Sound and Theatre Communications Group. Founded in 1963, it is led by Artistic Director Jerry Manning and Managing Director Benjamin Moore...
("The Rep"), it is one of the city's three largest playhouses. ACT's Mainstage has presented many world, American, and West Coast premieres. Numerous productions have gone on to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
.
ACT is a member of the League of Resident Theatres
League of Resident Theatres
The League of Resident Theaters is the largest professional theater association of its kind in the United States, with 76 member Theaters located in every major market in the U.S., including 29 states and the District of Columbia...
(LORT); the only other Seattle members are Intiman and The Rep. It is also a member of Theatre Puget Sound
Theatre Puget Sound
Theatre Puget Sound is a not-for-profit organization devoted to supporting the performing arts in the Puget Sound area of Washington. It was founded in 1997.Both individuals and organizations can be members of Theatre Puget Sound...
, and is a constituent of Theatre Communications Group
Theatre Communications Group
Theatre Communications Group is an organization dedicated to the promotion of non-profit professional theatre in the United States. TCG has over 450 member theatres located in 47 states; 17,000 individual members; and a growing number of University, Funder, Business and Trustee Affiliates...
. ACT is also a member of the Downtown Seattle Association, Seattle's Convention and Visitors Bureau and Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce.
Mainstage production history
| 2010 Season | Playwright | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Trip to Bountiful The Trip to Bountiful The Trip to Bountiful is a 1985 film starring Geraldine Page, John Heard, Carlin Glynn, Richard Bradford and Rebecca De Mornay. Geraldine Page won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance as Carrie Watts. The movie was adapted by Horton Foote from his television play. The Trip to... |
Horton Foote Horton Foote Albert Horton Foote, Jr. was an American playwright and screenwriter, perhaps best known for his Academy Award-winning screenplays for the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird and the 1983 film Tender Mercies, and his notable live television dramas during the Golden Age of Television... |
||
| The Female of the Species The Female of the Species (play) The Female of the Species is a comic play by Joanna Murray-Smith first performed in 2006. The play is a satire about celebrity feminists, with a plot loosely inspired by a real-life incident in 2000, when author Germaine Greer was held at gunpoint in her own home by a disturbed student.The play... |
Joanna Murray-Smith Joanna Murray-Smith Joanna Murray-Smith is a Melbourne based playwright, screenwriter, novelist, librettist and newspaper columnist.-Biography:... |
||
| Yankee Tavern | Steven Dietz Steven Dietz Steven Dietz is an American playwright whose work is largely performed regionally, i.e. outside of New York City... |
||
| The Lady With All the Answers | David Rambo David Rambo David Rambo is a writer, actor and producer.He grew up in Spring City, Pennsylvania. His grandmother and mother were librarians which helped develop his lifelong interest in literature and art.... |
||
| The Lieutenant of Inishmore The Lieutenant of Inishmore The Lieutenant of Inishmore is a black comedy by playwright Martin McDonagh, first produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company in London in 2001.-Plot:... |
Martin McDonagh Martin McDonagh Martin McDonagh is an Irish-British playwright, filmmaker, and screenwriter. Although he has lived in London his entire life, he is considered one of the most important living Irish playwrights.-Life:... |
||
| 2009 Season | Playwright | Notes | |
| Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde | Robert Louis Stevenson Robert Louis Stevenson Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer. His best-known books include Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.... (Adapted by) Jeffrey Hatcher Jeffrey Hatcher Jeffrey Hatcher is a playwright and screenwriter. He wrote the stage play Compleat Female Stage Beauty, which he later adapted into a screenplay, shortened to just Stage Beauty... |
||
| Below the Belt | Richard Dresser | ||
| the break/s | Marc Bamuthi Joseph | ||
| Das Barbecü | Jim Luigs and Scott Warrender | ||
| Runt of the Litter | Bo Eason Bo Eason Bo Eason is a former professional American football player who played safety for four seasons for the Houston Oilers. He is currently an actor and playwright. His show "Runt of the Litter" is now being performed in multiple cities. His brother is former NFL quarterback, Tony Eason.-External links:*... |
||
| Rock n' Roll | Tom Stoppard Tom Stoppard Sir Tom Stoppard OM, CBE, FRSL is a British playwright, knighted in 1997. He has written prolifically for TV, radio, film and stage, finding prominence with plays such as Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Professional Foul, The Real Thing, and Rosencrantz and... |
||
| 2008 Season | Playwright | Notes | |
| The Ilkhom Theatre Festival | Ilkhom Theatre Ilkhom Theatre Ilkhom Theatre is a theatre company based in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Founded by Mark Weil in 1976, it was the first independent theatre in the Soviet Union, and remains self-supporting to this day.... Company |
A Seattle First | |
| Fathers and Sons | Michael Bradford | World Premiere | |
| A Marvelous Party: The Noel Coward Noël Coward Sir Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy... Celebration |
David Ira Goldstein | ||
| Intimate Exchanges | Alan Ayckbourn Alan Ayckbourn Sir Alan Ayckbourn CBE is a prolific English playwright. He has written and produced seventy-three full-length plays in Scarborough and London and was, between 1972 and 2009, the artistic director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, where all but four of his plays have received their... |
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| Eurydice Eurydice Eurydice in Greek mythology, was an oak nymph or one of the daughters of Apollo . She was the wife of Orpheus, who loved her dearly; on their wedding day, he played joyful songs as his bride danced through the meadow. One day, a satyr saw and pursued Eurydice, who stepped on a venomous snake,... |
Sarah Ruhl Sarah Ruhl Sarah Ruhl is an American playwright. She is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship.-Biography:Ruhl was born in Wilmette, Illinois. Originally, she intended to be a poet. However, after she studied under Paula Vogel at Brown University , she was convinced to switch to playwrighting... |
||
| Becky's New Car | Stephen Dietz | World Premiere | |
| 2007 Season | Playwright | Notes | |
| The Clean House | Sarah Ruhl | ||
| Souvenir Souvenir (play) Souvenir is a two-character play, with incidental music, by Stephen Temperley.Set in a Greenwich Village supper club in 1964, it flashes back to the musical career of Florence Foster Jenkins, a wealthy socialite with a famously uncertain sense of pitch and key. In 1932, she met mediocre pianist... |
Stephen Temperley | ||
| Stuff Happens | David Hare | ||
| First Class | David Wagoner David Wagoner David Russell Wagoner is an American poet who has written many poetry collections and ten novels. Two of his books have been nominated for National Book Awards.... |
World Premiere | |
| The Mojo and the Sayso | Aishah Rahman | ||
| The Women | Clare Boothe Luce Clare Boothe Luce Clare Boothe Luce was an American playwright, editor, journalist, ambassador, socialite and U.S. Congresswoman, representing the state of Connecticut.-Early life:... |
||
| 2006 Season | Playwright | Notes | |
| The Pillowman The Pillowman The Pillowman is a 2003 play by Irish playwright Martin McDonagh. It received its first public reading in an early version at the Finborough Theatre, London, in 1995... |
Martin McDonagh Martin McDonagh Martin McDonagh is an Irish-British playwright, filmmaker, and screenwriter. Although he has lived in London his entire life, he is considered one of the most important living Irish playwrights.-Life:... |
West Coast Premier | |
| Miss Witherspoon | Christopher Durang Christopher Durang Christopher Ferdinand Durang is an American playwright known for works of outrageous and often absurd comedy. His work was especially popular in the 1980s.- Life :... |
West Coast Premier | |
| Wine in the Wilderness | Alice Childress Alice Childress Alice Childress was an American playwright, actor, and author.-Early life:Childress was born in South Carolina, but at age nine, after her parents separated, she moved to Harlem where she lived with her grandmother on 118th Street, between Lenox Avenue and Fifth Avenue... |
||
| Mitzi's Abortion Mitzi's Abortion Mitzi's Abortion is a play by a Seattle-based playwright, Elizabeth Heffron. The play dramatizes the journey of a young woman who is advised by her doctor to have a late-term abortion due to anencephaly, a severe birth defect, in her child. The social and cultural conflicts that arise as a result... |
Elizabeth Heffron | World Premiere | |
| A Number | Caryl Churchill Caryl Churchill Caryl Churchill is an English dramatist known for her use of non-naturalistic techniques and feminist themes, the abuses of power, and sexual politics. She is acknowledged as a major playwright in the English language and a leading female writer... |
||
| The Underpants The Underpants The Underpants is the most recent adaptation of the 1910 German farce Die Hose by playwright Carl Sternheim. The adaptation was written by Steve Martin... |
Steve Martin Steve Martin Stephen Glenn "Steve" Martin is an American actor, comedian, writer, playwright, producer, musician and composer.... |
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| 2005 Season | Playwright | Notes | |
| Bach at Leipzig | Itamar Moses | West Coast Premiere | |
| The Ugly American | Mike Daisey Mike Daisey Mike Daisey is an American monologist, author, and actor best known for his full-length extemporaneous monologues. His breakthrough work 21 Dog Years is an account of life as an Amazon.com employee during the dot-com boom. Since that time he has created monologues about Nikola Tesla, L... |
World Premiere | |
| Born Yesterday Born Yesterday Born Yesterday is a play written by Garson Kanin which premiered on Broadway in 1946, starring Judy Holliday as Billie Dawn. The play was adapted intoa successful 1950 film of the same name.- Plot :... |
Garson Kanin Garson Kanin Garson Kanin was a prolific American writer and director of plays and films.-Film and stage career:... |
||
| The Night of the Iguana The Night of the Iguana The Night of the Iguana is a stageplay written by American author Tennessee Williams, based on his 1948 short story. The play premiered on Broadway in 1961. Two film adaptations have been made, including the Academy Award-winning 1964 film of the same name.... |
Tennessee Williams Tennessee Williams Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III was an American writer who worked principally as a playwright in the American theater. He also wrote short stories, novels, poetry, essays, screenplays and a volume of memoirs... |
||
| Vincent in Brixton Vincent in Brixton Vincent in Brixton is a 2003 play by Nicholas Wright. The play premiered at London's National Theatre. It transferred to the Playhouse Theatre and later to Broadway.... |
Nicholas Wright Nicholas Wright (playwright) Nicholas Wright is a British dramatist. He opened and ran the Theatre Upstairs at the Royal Court Theatre, was joint artistic director of the Royal Court and is a former literary manager and associate director of the Royal National Theatre. Wright began acting as a child, and trained at The... |
||
| Flight | Charlayne Woodard | ||
| 2004 Season | Playwright | Notes | |
| Alki | Eric Overmyer | World Premiere | |
| Enchanted April Enchanted April Enchanted April is the second film adaptation Elizabeth von Arnim's 1922 novel, The Enchanted April. The novel was adapted as a Broadway play in 1925, and as an RKO Radio film in 1935 - both using the same title as the novel. The 1992 film release received several Golden Globe and Academy Award... |
Matthew Barber | ||
| Jumpers | Tom Stoppard | ||
| Good Boys | Jane Martin Jane Martin Jane Martin is the RUMORED pen-name of a playwright speculated to be retired Actors Theatre of Louisville artistic director Jon Jory. Jon Jory, Martin's spokesperson, denies being Jane Martin but has directed the premieres of Martin's shows.... |
West Coast Premiere | |
| Fiction | Steven Dietz Steven Dietz Steven Dietz is an American playwright whose work is largely performed regionally, i.e. outside of New York City... |
West Coast Premiere | |
| 2003 Season | Playwright | Notes | |
| Absurd Person Singular | Alan Ayckbourn | ||
| The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? | Edward Albee Edward Albee Edward Franklin Albee III is an American playwright who is best known for The Zoo Story , The Sandbox , Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? , and a rewrite of the screenplay for the unsuccessful musical version of Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's . His works are considered well-crafted, often... |
West Coast Premiere | |
| A Moon for the Misbegotten A Moon for the Misbegotten A Moon for the Misbegotten is a play by Eugene O'Neill. The play can be thought of as a sequel to the autobiographical Long Day's Journey into Night... |
Eugene O'Neill Eugene O'Neill Eugene Gladstone O'Neill was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in Literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into American drama techniques of realism earlier associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish... |
||
| Omnium-Gatherum | Theresa Rebeck and Alexandra Gersten-Vassilaros | West Coast Premiere | |
| The Syringa Tree The Syringa Tree The Syringa Tree is a deeply personal memory play of a childhood under apartheid. Written and often performed by Pamela Gien it has received excellent reviews in New York and across the USA as well as in London... |
Pamela Gien | Production went on to New York | |
| 2002 Season | Playwright | Notes | |
| Mourning Becomes Electra Mourning Becomes Electra Mourning Becomes Electra is a play cycle written by American playwright Eugene O'Neill. The play premiered on Broadway at the Guild Theatre on 26 October 1931 where it ran for 150 performances before closing in March 1932... |
Eugene O'Neill | ||
| Dirty Blonde Dirty Blonde (play) Dirty Blonde is a play by Claudia Shear.Conceived by Shear and James Lapine and featuring songs from I'm No Angel and She Done Him Wrong, it explores the phenomenon of the legendary Mae West, one of America's most enduring and controversial pop culture icons... |
Claudia Shear Claudia Shear Claudia Shear is an American actress and playwright.The Brooklyn-born Shear first came to prominence with her 1994 self-penned solo performance piece Blown Sideways Through Life, which enjoyed a run of 221 performances at the off-Broadway Cherry Lane Theatre and won her an Obie Award and a Drama... |
||
| Yellowman | Deal Orlandersmith | ||
| Wintertime | Charles L. Mee | ||
| Fuddy Meers | David Lindsay-Abaire | ||
| The Education of Randy Newman | Randy Newman Randy Newman Randall Stuart "Randy" Newman is an American singer-songwriter, arranger, composer, and pianist who is known for his mordant pop songs and for film scores.... , Michael Roth, Jerry Patch |
World Premiere | |
| 2001 Season | Playwright | Notes | |
| Big Love | Charles L. Mee | West Coast Premiere | |
| Dinner with Friends | Donald Margulies Donald Margulies Donald Margulies is an American playwright and a professor of English and Theater Studies at Yale University... |
||
| Polish Joke | David Ives | World Premiere | |
| Waiting to Be Invited | S.M. Shephard-Massat | ||
| A Little Night Music A Little Night Music A Little Night Music is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by Hugh Wheeler. Inspired by the Ingmar Bergman film Smiles of a Summer Night, it involves the romantic lives of several couples. Its title is a literal English translation of the German name for Mozart's Serenade... |
Stephen Sondheim Stephen Sondheim Stephen Joshua Sondheim is an American composer and lyricist for stage and film. He is the winner of an Academy Award, multiple Tony Awards including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Laurence Olivier Award... |
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| Grand Magic | Eduardo de Filippo | ||
| 2000 Season | Playwright | Notes | |
| God of Vengeance | Donald Margulies | World Premiere | |
| Talley's Folly Talley's Folly Talley's Folly is a 1979 play by American playwright Lanford Wilson, the second in his cycle, The Talley Trilogy between his plays Talley & Son and Fifth of July. Set in an old boathouse near rural Lebanon, Missouri in 1944, it is a romantic comedy following the characters Matt Friedman and Sally... |
Lanford Wilson Lanford Wilson Lanford Wilson was an American playwright who helped to advance the Off-Off-Broadway theater movement. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1980, was elected in 2001 to the Theater Hall of Fame, and in 2004 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters... |
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| 2.5 Minute Ride | Lisa Cron | ||
| A Skull in Connemara | Martin McDonagh | Production went on to New York | |
| In the Penal Colony | Philip Glass Philip Glass Philip Glass is an American composer. He is considered to be one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public .His music is often described as minimalist, along with... |
World Premiere; production went on to New York | |
| The Odd Couple The Odd Couple The Odd Couple is a 1965 Broadway play by Neil Simon, followed by a successful film and television series, as well as other derivative works and spin offs, many featuring one or more of the same actors. The plot concerns two mismatched roommates, one neat and uptight, the other more easygoing and... |
Neil Simon Neil Simon Neil Simon is an American playwright and screenwriter. He has written numerous Broadway plays, including Brighton Beach Memoirs, Biloxi Blues, and The Odd Couple. He won the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Lost In Yonkers. He has written the screenplays for several of his plays that... |
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| 1999 Season | Playwright | Notes | |
| The Crucible The Crucible The Crucible is a 1952 play by the American playwright Arthur Miller. It is a dramatization of the Salem witch trials that took place in the Province of Massachusetts Bay during 1692 and 1693. Miller wrote the play as an allegory of McCarthyism, when the US government blacklisted accused communists... |
Arthur Miller Arthur Miller Arthur Asher Miller was an American playwright and essayist. He was a prominent figure in American theatre, writing dramas that include plays such as All My Sons , Death of a Salesman , The Crucible , and A View from the Bridge .Miller was often in the public eye,... |
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| Goblin Market | Polly Pen & Peggy Harmon | ||
| Stonewall Jackson's House | Jonathan Reynolds | ||
| Temporary Help | David Wiltse | World Premiere; production went on to New York | |
| Side Man | Warren Leight | West Coast Premiere | |
| Communicating Doors | Alan Ayckbourn | ||
| 1998 Season | Playwright | Notes | |
| Thunder Knocking on the Door | Keith Glover | ||
| Death of a Salesman Death of a Salesman Death of a Salesman is a 1949 play written by American playwright Arthur Miller. It was the recipient of the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and Tony Award for Best Play. Premiered at the Morosco Theatre in February 1949, the original production ran for a total of 742 performances.-Plot :Willy Loman... |
Arthur Miller | ||
| Collected Stories | Donald Margulies | ||
| Scent of the Roses | Lisette Lecat Ross | World Premiere; production went on to New York | |
| The Summer Moon | John Olive | World Premiere | |
| Quills Quills Quills is a 2000 period film directed by Philip Kaufman and adapted from the Obie award-winning play by Doug Wright, who also wrote the original screenplay. Inspired by the life and work of the Marquis de Sade, Quills re-imagines the last years of the Marquis' incarceration in the insane asylum at... |
Doug Wright Doug Wright Doug Wright is an American playwright, librettist, and screenwriter. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2004 for his play, I Am My Own Wife.-Early years:Wright was born in Dallas, Texas... |
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| Violet | Jeanine Tesori | ||
| 1997 Season | Playwright | Notes | |
| The Notebook of Trigorin The Notebook of Trigorin The Notebook of Trigorin is a play by American playwright Tennessee Williams. It is an adaptation of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull.The play was first produced in 1981 by the Vancouver Playhouse in Vancouver, British Columbia... |
Tennessee Williams | ||
| The Nina Variations | Stephen Dietz | ||
| Room Service | John Murray and Allen Boretz | ||
| Going to St. Ives | Lee Blessing | World Premiere | |
| Blues for an Alabama Sky | Pearl Cleage | ||
| Old Wicked Songs | John Marans | ||
| The Big Slam | Bill Corbett | ||
| 1996 Season | Playwright | Notes | |
| Arcadia Arcadia (play) Arcadia is a 1993 play by Tom Stoppard concerning the relationship between past and present and between order and disorder and the certainty of knowledge... |
Tom Stoppard | ||
| Avenue X | Jon Jiler and Ray Leslee | ||
| Laughter on the 23rd Floor | Neil Simon | ||
| Cheap | Tom Stoppard | World Premiere, First performance in ACT's new home at Kreielsheimer Place | |
| The Crimson Thread | Mary Hanes | ||
| My One Good Nerve | Ruby Dee Ruby Dee Ruby Dee is an American actress, poet, playwright, screenwriter, journalist, and activist, perhaps best known for co-starring in the film A Raisin in the Sun and the film American Gangster for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.-Early years:Dee was born Ruby... |
World Premiere | |
| 1995 Season | Playwright | Notes | |
| The Gospel at Colonus The Gospel at Colonus The Gospel at Colonus is a gospel version of Sophocles's tragedy, Oedipus at Colonus. The show was created in New York City in 1985 by the experimental-theatre director Lee Breuer, one of the founders of the seminal American avant-garde theatre company Mabou Mines, and composer Bob Telson. The... |
Lee Breuer Lee Breuer Lee Breuer is an American academic, educator, film maker, poet, lyricist, writer and stage director.-Work with Mabou Mines:Lee Breuer is a founding artistic director of Mabou Mines Theater Company in New York City, which he began in 1970 with colleagues Philip Glass, Ruth Maleczech, JoAnne... and Bob Telson Bob Telson Robert "Bob" Eria Telson is an American composer, songwriter, and pianist best known for his work in musical theater and film, for which he has received Tony, Pulitzer, and Academy Award nominations. He is currently living and working in Argentina.-Biography:Robert Eria Telson was born in Cannes,... |
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| Hospitality | Allan Havis | ||
| Handing Down the Names | Steven Dietz | World Premiere | |
| Later Life | A.R. Gurney | ||
| The Odd Couple | Neil Simon | ||
| Tea | Velina Hasu Houston | ||
| The Language of Flowers | Edit Villarreal | World Premiere | |
| 1994 Season | Playwright | Notes | |
| Betty the Yeti | Jon Klein | ||
| Gray's Anatomy | Jim Leonard, Jr. | World Premiere | |
| Keely and Du | Jane Martin | ||
| Man of the Moment | Alan Ayckbourn | ||
| Fish Head Soup | Philip Kan Gotanda | ||
| Voices in the Dark | John Pielmeier | World Premiere | |
| 1993 Season | Playwright | Notes | |
| The Red and the Black | Jon Klein | World Premiere | |
| The Cover of Life | R.T. Robinson | ||
| Lonely Planet | Steven Dietz | ||
| Life During Wartime | Keith Reddin | ||
| Agnes Smedley: Our American Friend | Doris Baizley | World Premiere | |
| Dreams From a Summer House | Alan Ayckbourn and John Pattison | ||
| 1992 Season | Playwright | Notes | |
| Trust | Steven Dietz | ||
| Shadowlands Shadowlands Shadowlands is a 1985 television film, written by William Nicholson, directed by Norman Stone and produced by David M. Thompson for BBC Wales. Its subject is the relationship between Oxford don and author, C. S. Lewis and Joy Gresham.... |
William Nicholson | ||
| The Revengers' Comedies (Parts I and II) | Alan Ayckbourn | ||
| Eleemosynary Eleemosynary (play) Eleemosynary is a 1985 one-act play by Lee Blessing. It follows the relationships between three generations of women. The word "eleemosynary" itself plays a significant part in the plot.- Characters :The characters in the play are:... |
Lee Blessing Lee Blessing -Biography:Blessing's best-known play is A Walk in the Woods, which depicts the developing relationship between two arms limitation negotiators, one Russian and one American, over years of negotiation... |
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| Sunsets and Glories | Peter Barnes Peter Barnes Peter Barnes was an English Olivier Award-winning playwright and screenwriter. His most famous work is the play The Ruling Class, which was made into a 1972 film for which Peter O'Toole received an Oscar nomination.... |
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| 1991 Season | Playwright | Notes | |
| My Children! My Africa! | Athol Fugard | ||
| The Illusion | Tony Kushner Tony Kushner Anthony Robert "Tony" Kushner is an American playwright and screenwriter. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1993 for his play, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, and co-authored with Eric Roth the screenplay for the 2005 film, Munich.-Life and career:Kushner was born... |
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| Tears of Rage | Doris Baizley | World Premiere | |
| Our Country's Good | Timberlake Wertenbaker | ||
| Willi: An Evening of Wilderness and Spirit | John Pielmeier | World Premiere | |
| Halcyon Days Halcyon Days (play) Halcyon Days is a play written by Steven Dietz that satirizes the 1983 American invasion of Grenada.The play had its world premiere October 24, 1991 at the ACT Theatre in Seattle, Washington.-Characters:*Eddie, a Senator, forties... |
Steven Dietz | World Premiere | |
| 1990 Season | Playwright | Notes | |
| An American Comedy | Richard Nelson Richard Nelson (playwright) Richard Nelson is an American playwright and librettist. He wrote the books for the musicals James Joyce's The Dead and the Broadway version of Chess.-Personal life:Nelson was born in Chicago, Illinois.... |
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| Lloyd's Prayer | Kevin Kling Kevin Kling Kevin Kling is an American commentator for National Public Radio and acclaimed storyteller.Kevin Kling grew up in Osseo, Minnesota and graduated from Gustavus Adolphus College in 1979 with a B. A. in Theatre... |
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| A Normal Life | Erik Brogger | World Premiere | |
| Born in the RSA | Barney Simon and The Market Theatre Company | ||
| Four Our Fathers | Jon Klein | ||
| Hapgood Hapgood Hapgood is a play by Tom Stoppard, first produced in 1988. It is mainly about espionage, focusing on a British female spymaster and her juggling of career and motherhood... |
Tom Stoppard | ||
| 1989 Season | Playwright | Notes | |
| The Downside | Richard Dresser | ||
| Breaking the Silence | Stephen Poliakoff Stephen Poliakoff Stephen Poliakoff, CBE, FRSL is an acclaimed British playwright, director and scriptwriter, widely judged amongst Britain's foremost television dramatists.-Early life and career:... |
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| A Walk in the Woods | Lee Blessing | ||
| Red Noses Red Noses Red Noses is a comedy about the black death by Peter Barnes, first staged at Barbican Theatre in 1985. It depicted a sprightly priest, originally played by Antony Sher, who travelled around the plague-affected villages of 14th century France with a band of fools, known as God's Zanies, offering... |
Peter Barnes | ||
| Happenstance | Steven Dietz and Eric Bain Peltoniemi | World Premiere | |
| Woman in Mind | Alan Ayckbourn | ||
| 1988 Season | Playwright | Notes | |
| Merrily We Roll Along | Stephen Sondheim and George Furth | ||
| Mrs. California | Doris Baizley | ||
| A Chorus of Disapproval A Chorus of Disapproval (play) A Chorus of Disapproval is a 1984 play written by English playwright Alan Ayckbourn.-Synopsis:The story follows a young widower, Guy Jones, as he joins an amateur operatic society that is putting on The Beggar's Opera. He rapidly progresses through the ranks to become the male lead, while... |
Alan Ayckbourn | ||
| God's Country | Steven Dietz | World Premiere | |
| Principia Scriptoriae | Richard Nelson | ||
| The Voice of the Prairie | John Olive | ||
| 1987 Season | Playwright | Notes | |
| March of the Falsettos March of the Falsettos March of the Falsettos is a musical with a book, lyrics, and music by William Finn.A sequel to In Trousers, the one-acter continues the story of Marvin and his journey in search of self-understanding, inner peace, and a life with a "happily ever after" ending... |
William Finn William Finn William Alan Finn is an American composer and lyricist of musicals. His musical Falsettos received the 1992 Tony Awards for Best Music and Lyrics and for Best Book.-Biography:... |
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| A Lie of the Mind A Lie of the Mind A Lie of the Mind is a play written by Sam Shepard, first staged at the off-Broadway Promenade Theater on 5 December 1985. The play was directed by Shepard himself with stars Harvey Keitel as Jake, Amanda Plummer as Beth, Aidan Quinn as Frankie, Geraldine Page as Lorraine, and Will Patton as Mike... |
Sam Shepard Sam Shepard Sam Shepard is an American playwright, actor, and television and film director. He is the author of several books of short stories, essays, and memoirs, and received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979 for his play Buried Child... |
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| The Diary of a Scoundrel | Erik Brogger | ||
| The Marriage of Bette and Boo | Christopher Durang | ||
| Glengarry Glen Ross Glengarry Glen Ross Glengarry Glen Ross is a 1984 play written by David Mamet. The play shows parts of two days in the lives of four desperate Chicago real estate agents who are prepared to engage in any number of unethical, illegal acts—from lies and flattery to bribery, threats, intimidation and burglary—to sell... |
David Mamet David Mamet David Alan Mamet is an American playwright, essayist, screenwriter and film director.Best known as a playwright, Mamet won a Pulitzer Prize and received a Tony nomination for Glengarry Glen Ross . He also received a Tony nomination for Speed-the-Plow . As a screenwriter, he received Oscar... |
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| Biloxi Blues Biloxi Blues Biloxi Blues is a semi-autobiographical play by Neil Simon. The second chapter in what is known as his Eugene trilogy, it follows Brighton Beach Memoirs and precedes Broadway Bound.... |
Neil Simon | ||
| 1986 Season | Playwright | Notes | |
| On the Razzle On the Razzle (play) On the Razzle is a play by Tom Stoppard. It is an adaptation of the Viennese play Einen Jux will er sich machen by Johann Nestroy, which previously was adapted twice by Thornton Wilder... |
Tom Stoppard | ||
| Painting Churches Painting Churches Painting Churches is a play written by Tina Howe, first produced Off-Broadway in 1976. It was a finalist for the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The play concerns the relationship between an artist daughter and her aging parents.-Plot:... |
Tina Howe Tina Howe Tina Howe is an American playwright. She is the daughter of journalist Quincy Howe and was raised in a literary family... |
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| Tales from Hollywood | Christopher Hampton Christopher Hampton Christopher James Hampton CBE, FRSL is a British playwright, screen writer and film director. He is best known for his play based on the novel Les Liaisons dangereuses and the film version Dangerous Liaisons and also more recently for writing the nominated screenplay for the film adaptation of... |
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| Brighton Beach Memoirs Brighton Beach Memoirs Brighton Beach Memoirs is a semi-autobiographical play by Neil Simon, the first chapter in what is known as his Eugene trilogy. It precedes Biloxi Blues and Broadway Bound.-Characters:*Eugene Morris Jerome, almost 15... |
Neil Simon | ||
| The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs | David Edgar David Edgar (playwright) David Edgar is a British playwright and author who has had more than sixty of his plays published and performed on stage, radio and television around the world, making him one of the most prolific dramatists of the post-1960s generation in Great Britain.He was resident playwright at the Birmingham... |
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| Little Shop of Horrors Little Shop of Horrors (musical) Little Shop of Horrors is a rock musical, by composer Alan Menken and writer Howard Ashman, about a hapless florist shop worker who raises a plant that feeds on human blood. The musical is based on the low-budget 1960 black comedy film The Little Shop of Horrors, directed by Roger Corman... |
Howard Ashman Howard Ashman Howard Elliott Ashman was an American playwright and lyricist. Ashman first studied at Boston University and Goddard College and then went on to achieve his master's degree from Indiana University in 1974... and Alan Menken Alan Menken Alan Menken is an American musical theatre and film composer and pianist.Menken is best known for his numerous scores for films produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios. His scores for The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and Pocahontas have each won him two Academy Awards... |
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| 1985 Season | Playwright | Notes | |
| King Lear King Lear King Lear is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. The title character descends into madness after foolishly disposing of his estate between two of his three daughters based on their flattery, bringing tragic consequences for all. The play is based on the legend of Leir of Britain, a mythological... |
William Shakespeare William Shakespeare William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"... |
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| True West True West (play) True West is a play by American playwright Sam Shepard. Like most of his works it is inspired by myths of American life and popular culture. The play is a more traditional narrative than most of the plays that Shepard has written.-Plot:... |
Sam Shepard | ||
| Maydays | David Edgar | ||
| Other Places | Harold Pinter Harold Pinter Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to... |
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| End of the World | Arthur Kopit | ||
| Quartermaine's Terms Quartermaine's Terms Quartermaine's Terms is a play by Simon Gray which won The Cheltenham Prize in 1982.-Plot:The play takes place over a period of two years in the 1960s in the staffroom at a Cambridge school for teaching English to foreigners... |
Simon Gray Simon Gray Simon James Holliday Gray, CBE , was an English playwright and memoirist who also had a career as a university lecturer in English literature at Queen Mary, University of London, for 20 years... |
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| 1984 Season | Playwright | Notes | |
| Amadeus Amadeus Amadeus is a play by Peter Shaffer.It is based on the lives of the composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri, highly fictionalized.Amadeus was first performed in 1979... |
Peter Shaffer Peter Shaffer Sir Peter Levin Shaffer is an English dramatist and playwright, screenwriter and author of numerous award-winning plays, several of which have been filmed.-Early life:... |
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| Top Girls Top Girls Top Girls is a 1982 play by Caryl Churchill. It is about a woman named Marlene, a career-driven woman who is employed at the 'Top Girls' employment agency. The play examines issues of gender discrimination present in the Thatcherite society that it is set in... |
Caryl Churchill | ||
| Angels Fall Angels Fall Angels Fall is a play written by Lanford Wilson. It debuted at New York's Circle Repertory Company in 1982.-Characters:*Niles Harris: a cynical, middle-aged university professor*Vita Harris: his much younger wife... |
Lanford Wilson | ||
| Thirteen | Lynda Myles Lynda Myles Lynda Myles is a British writer and producer. She served as director of the Edinburgh International Film Festival , director and curator of film at the Pacific Film Archive, University of California, Berkeley, Senior Vice–President at Columbia Pictures, Commissioning Editor for Drama at the BBC for... |
World Premiere | |
| Fool for Love Fool for Love (play) Fool for Love is a play written by American playwright/actor Sam Shepard.-Plot:The "fools" in the play are battling lovers at a Mojave Desert motel. May is hiding out at said motel when an old childhood friend and old flame, Eddie. Eddie tries to convince May to come back home with him and live in... |
Sam Shepard | ||
| The Communication Cord | Brian Friel Brian Friel Brian Friel is an Irish dramatist, author and director of the Field Day Theatre Company. He is considered to be the greatest living English-language dramatist, hailed by the English-speaking world as an "Irish Chekhov" and "the universally accented voice of Ireland"... |
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| 1983 Season | Playwright | Notes | |
| The Dresser The Dresser The Dresser is a 1983 film which tells the story of an aging actor's personal assistant, who struggles to keep his charge's life together. It is based on a screenplay by Ronald Harwood, in turn based on his successful 1980 West End and Broadway play of the same name.The film was directed by Peter... |
Ronald Harwood Ronald Harwood Sir Ronald Harwood CBE is an author, playwright and screenwriter. He is most noted for his plays for the British stage as well as the screenplays for The Dresser and The Pianist, for which he won the 2003 Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay... |
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| The Dining Room | A.R. Gurney | ||
| Crimes of the Heart Crimes of the Heart Crimes of the Heart is a play by Beth Henley.-Synopsis:At the core of the tragic comedy are the three Magrath sisters, Meg, Babe, and Lenny, who reunite at Old Granddaddy's home in Hazlehurst, Mississippi after Babe shoots her abusive husband. The trio was raised in a dysfunctional family with a... |
Beth Henley Beth Henley Elizabeth Becker "Beth" Henley is an American dramatist and actress. She writes primarily about women's issues and family in the Southern United States. She is also a screenwriter who has written many film adaptations of her plays... |
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| Educating Rita Educating Rita Educating Rita is a stage comedy by British playwright Willy Russell. It is a play for two actors set entirely in the office of an Open University lecturer.... |
Willy Russell | ||
| A Soldier's Play A Soldier's Play A Soldier's Play is a drama by Charles Fuller. The play uses a murder mystery to explore the complicated feelings of anger and resentment that some African Americans have toward one another, and the ways in which many black Americans have absorbed white racist attitudes.This play is loosely based... |
Charles Fuller | ||
| Cloud 9 | Caryl Churchill | ||
| 1982 Season | Playwright | Notes | |
| Da | Hugh Leonard Hugh Leonard Hugh Leonard was an Irish dramatist, television writer and essayist. In a career that spanned 50 years, Leonard wrote more than 18 plays, two volumes of essays and two autobiographies, one novel and numerous screenplays and teleplays, as well as writing a regular newspaper column.-Life and... |
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| Fridays | Andrew Johns Andrew Johns Andrew Gary "Joey" Johns is an Australian former professional rugby league footballer of the 1990s and 2000s who is considered by many to be the greatest player of all time. He was heralded as the world's best halfback for a number of years... |
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| Waiting for the Parade | John Murrell John Murrell (playwright) John Murrell, OC, AOE is an American-born Canadian playwright.Born in Lubbock, Texas, Murrel moved to Alberta after graduating from Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas with a BFA in 1968. He moved to Canada to avoid the draft, studying at the University of Calgary... |
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| The Gin Game The Gin Game The Gin Game is a two-person, two-act play by D.L. Coburn that premiered at American Theater Arts in Hollywood in September 1976, directed by Kip Niven. It was Coburn's first play, and the theater's first production.-Plot:... |
D.L. Coburn | ||
| The Greeks: The War (Part 1) | John Barton John Barton (director) John Bernard Adie Barton CBE is a theatrical director. He is the son of Sir Harold Montagu and Lady Joyce Barton. He married Anne Righter, a university lecturer, in 1968.... and Kenneth Cavander |
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| The Greeks: The War (Part 2) | John Barton and Kenneth Cavander | ||
| 1981 Season | Playwright | Notes | |
| Custer | Robert E. Ingham | ||
| Getting Out Getting Out Getting Out is a play by Marsha Norman.-Production history:Getting Out was presented by Lester Osterman, Lucille Lortel, and Marc Howard at the Theatre de Lys in New York City, on 15 May 1979. The cast was as follows:*Arlene - Susan Kingsley... |
Marsha Norman Marsha Norman Marsha Norman is an American playwright, screenwriter, and novelist. She received the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play night, Mother... |
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| Billy Bishop Goes to War Billy Bishop Goes to War Billy Bishop Goes to War is a Canadian musical, written by John MacLachlan Gray and Eric Peterson. One of the most famous and widely-produced plays in Canadian theatre, it dramatizes the life of Canadian World War I fighter pilot Billy Bishop.... |
John Gray with Eric Peterson Eric Peterson Eric Neal Peterson, C.M. is a Canadian stage and television actor, known for his roles in three major Canadian series – Street Legal, Corner Gas and This is Wonderland.-Personal life:... |
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| Night and Day Night and Day (play) Night and Day is a 1978 play by Tom Stoppard. The sets and costumes were designed by Carl Toms and it ran for two years at the Phoenix Theatre in central London, UK. The lead roles of Richard Wagner and Ruth Carson were created by John Thaw and Diana Rigg, respectively.The play is post-colonial in... |
Tom Stoppard | ||
| Loose Ends | Michael Weller Michael Weller Michael Weller is a Brooklyn-based playwright who is best known for his plays Moonchildren and Loose Ends. Weller is one of the founders of the Cherry Lane Theatre's acclaimed Mentor Project, which pairs pre-eminent playwrights with emerging playwrights for a season-long mentorship... |
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| Whose Life Is It, Anyway? | Brian Clark Brian Clark (playwright) Brian Burgess Clark is a full time playwright and playwright teacher. He is director of the Perry-Mansfield School of Arts theater program in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. He was the bicentennial playwright for Worthington, Ohio in the summer of 2003.... |
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| 1980 Season | Playwright | Notes | |
| For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf is a 1975 experimental play by Ntozake Shange. Initially staged in California, it has been performed Off-Broadway and on Broadway, and adapted as a book, a television film, and a theatrical film... |
Ntozake Shange Ntozake Shange Ntozake Shange born October 18, 1948, is an American playwright, and poet. As a self proclaimed black feminist, much of the content of her work addresses issues relating to race and feminism.... |
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| Catholics Catholics (novel) Catholics is a novel by Northern Irish-Canadian writer Brian Moore. It was first published in 1972, and was republished with an introduction by Robert Ellsberg and a series of study questions by Loyola Press in 2006.... |
Brian Moore Brian Moore (novelist) Brian Moore was a Northern Irish novelist and screenwriter who emigrated to Canada and later lived in the United States. He was acclaimed for the descriptions in his novels of life in Northern Ireland after the Second World War, in particular his explorations of the inter-communal divisions of The... |
World Premiere | |
| Artichoke | Joanna Glass Joanna Glass Joanna McClelland Glass is a playwright. She became an American citizen in 1962.-Plays:*1972 Canadian Gothic*1972 American Modern*1975 Artichoke*1980 To Grandmother's House We Go... |
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| Wings Wings (play) Wings is a 1978 play by American playwright Arthur Kopit. Originating as a radio play, it was later adapted for stage and screen.In 1976, Kopit was commissioned to write an original radio play by the NPR drama project Earplay... |
Arthur Kopit | ||
| Buried Child Buried Child Buried Child is a play by Sam Shepard first presented in 1978. It won the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and launched Shepard to national fame as a playwright... |
Sam Shepard | ||
| Starting Here, Starting Now Starting Here, Starting Now Starting Here, Starting Now is a musical revue with lyrics by Richard Maltby, Jr. and music by David Shire. With a cast of three and three musicians, the revue explores a variety of romantic relationships.... |
Richard Maltby, Jr. Richard Maltby, Jr. Richard Eldridge Maltby, Jr. is an American theatre director and producer, lyricist, and screenwriter. He is also well known as a constructor of cryptic crossword puzzles. He has done this for Harper's Magazine, sometimes in collaboration with E. R... and David Shire David Shire David Lee Shire is an American songwriter and the composer of stage musicals, film and television scores. The soundtrack to the movie The Taking of Pelham 123 and parts of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack such as Night on Disco Mountain, an adaptation of Modest Mussorgsky's Night on Bald... |
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| 1979 Season | Playwright | Notes | |
| Man and Superman Man and Superman Man and Superman is a four-act drama, written by George Bernard Shaw in 1903. The series was written in response to calls for Shaw to write a play based on the Don Juan theme. Man and Superman opened at The Royal Court Theatre in London on 23 May 1905, but with the omission of the 3rd Act... |
George Bernard Shaw George Bernard Shaw George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60... |
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| Fanshen | David Hare David Hare (playwright) Sir David Hare is an English playwright and theatre and film director.-Early life:Hare was born in St Leonards-on-Sea, Hastings, East Sussex, the son of Agnes and Clifford Hare, a sailor. He was educated at Lancing, an independent school in West Sussex, and at Jesus College, Cambridge... |
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| Otherwise Engaged Otherwise Engaged Otherwise Engaged is a bleakly comic play by English playwright Simon Gray. The play previewed at the Oxford Playhouse and the Richmond Theatre, and then opened at the Queen's Theatre in London on 10 July 1975, with Alan Bates as the star and Harold Pinter as director, produced by Michael Codron.... |
Simon Gray | ||
| Holy Ghosts | Romulus Linney Romulus Linney (playwright) Romulus Zachariah Linney IV was an American playwright and professor.-Life and career:Linney was born in Philadelphia, the son of Maitland Clabaugh and Romulus Zachariah Linney III. His great-grandfather was Republican Congressman Romulus Zachariah Linney. Linney was raised in Boone, North... |
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| The Water Engine The Water Engine The Water Engine is a play by David Mamet that highlights the sometimes violent suppression of a disruptive alternative energy technology. The storyline setting of 1934 likely coincides with the real-life experiences of Texans Henry "Dad" and Charles H. Garrett who, in 1935, received a U.S. Patent... |
David Mamet | ||
| The Fantasticks The Fantasticks The Fantasticks is a 1960 musical with music by Harvey Schmidt and lyrics by Tom Jones. It was produced by Lore Noto. It tells an allegorical story, loosely based on the play "The Romancers" by Edmond Rostand, concerning two neighboring fathers who trick their children, Luisa and Matt, into... |
Tom Jones Tom Jones (writer) Tom Jones is a lyricist of musical theatre. His best known work is The Fantasticks, which ran off-Broadway from 1960 until 2002, and the hit song from the same, Try to Remember. Other songs from "The Fantasticks" include "Soon It's Gonna Rain", "Much More" and "I Can See It"... and Harvey Schmidt Harvey Schmidt Harvey Lester Schmidt is an American composer for musical theatre. He is best known for composing the music for the longest running musical in history, The Fantasticks, which ran off-Broadway from 1960 - 2002.-Biography:... |
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| 1978 Season | Playwright | Notes | |
| Henry IV, Part I | William Shakespeare | ||
| The Shadow Box The Shadow Box The Shadow Box is a play written by actor Michael Cristofer. The play made its Broadway debut on March 31, 1977. The original cast included Simon Oakland as Joe, Laurence Luckinbill as Brian, Mandy Patinkin as Mark, Geraldine Fitzgerald as Felicity, and Vincent Spano as Steve.-Plot synopsis:The... |
Michael Cristofer Michael Cristofer Michael Ivan Cristofer is an American playwright, filmmaker and actor. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play for The Shadow Box in 1977.... |
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| Ballymurphy | Michael Neville | World Premiere Voted "Best of Season" by subscribers. Play went on to Manhattan Theatre Club. |
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| The Sea Horse | Edward J. Moore | ||
| Makassar Reef | Alexander Buzo | ||
| Anything Goes Anything Goes Anything Goes is a musical with music and lyrics by Cole Porter. The original book was a collaborative effort by Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse, heavily revised by the team of Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse. The story concerns madcap antics aboard an ocean liner bound from New York to London... |
Cole Porter Cole Porter Cole Albert Porter was an American composer and songwriter. Born to a wealthy family in Indiana, he defied the wishes of his domineering grandfather and took up music as a profession. Classically trained, he was drawn towards musical theatre... , Guy Bolton Guy Bolton Guy Reginald Bolton was a British-American playwright and writer of musical comedies. Born in England and educated in France and the U.S., he trained as an architect but turned to writing. Bolton preferred working in collaboration with others, principally the English writers P. G... and P.G. Wodehouse |
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| 1977 Season | Playwright | Notes | |
| As You Like It As You Like It As You Like It is a pastoral comedy by William Shakespeare believed to have been written in 1599 or early 1600 and first published in the folio of 1623. The play's first performance is uncertain, though a performance at Wilton House in 1603 has been suggested as a possibility... |
William Shakespeare | ||
| Travesties Travesties Travesties is a play by Tom Stoppard.The play centres on the figure of Henry Carr, an elderly man who reminisces about Zürich in 1917 during the First World War, and his interactions with James Joyce when he was writing Ulysses, Tristan Tzara during the rise of Dada, and Lenin leading up to the... |
Tom Stoppard | ||
| Ladyhouse Blues | Kevin O'Morrison | ||
| Streamers Streamers Streamers is a play by David Rabe. After premiering at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut in 1975, the production transferred to Broadway, opening on April 21, 1976 at Lincoln Center's Mitzi E. Newhouse Theatre, where it ran for 478 performances... |
David Rabe | ||
| The Club | Eve Merriam Eve Merriam -Writing career:Merriam's first book was the 1946 Family Circle, which won the Yale Younger Poets Prize.Her book, The Inner City Mother Goose, was described as one of the most banned books of the time. It inspired a 1971 Broadway musical called Inner City and a 1982 musical production called Street... |
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| Absurd Person Singular Absurd Person Singular Absurd Person Singular is a 1972 play by Alan Ayckbourn. Divided into three acts, it documents the changing fortunes of three married couples... |
Alan Ayckbourn | ||
| 1976 Season | Playwright | Notes | |
| Sizwe Bansi Is Dead | Athol Fugard, John Kani John Kani Bonsile John Kani is a South African actor, director and playwright.He was born in New Brighton, South Africa.Kani joined The Serpent Players in Port Elizabeth in 1965 and helped to create many plays that went unpublished but were performed to a resounding reception.These... and Winston Ntshona Winston Ntshona Winston Ntshona is a South African playwright and actor.Born in Port Elizabeth, Ntshona worked alongside fellow South African Athol Fugard on several occasions and played a minor role in Richard Attenborough's acclaimed film Gandhi.... |
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| The Time of Your Life The Time of Your Life The Time of Your Life is a 1939 five-act play by American playwright William Saroyan. The play is the first drama to win both the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. The play opened 25 October 1939 at the Booth Theatre in New York City... |
William Saroyan William Saroyan William Saroyan was an Armenian American dramatist and author. The setting of many of his stories and plays is the center of Armenian-American life in California in his native Fresno.-Early years:... |
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| Scapino | Frank Dunlop Frank Dunlop (director) Frank Dunlop is a British theatre director.-Early life:Dunlop was born in Leeds, England to Charles Norman Dunlop and Mary Aarons... and Jim Dale Jim Dale Jim Dale, MBE is an English actor, voice artist, singer and songwriter. He is best known in the United Kingdom for his many appearances in the Carry On series of films and in the US for narrating the Harry Potter audiobook series, for which he received two Grammy Awards, and the ABC series Pushing... |
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| Desire Under the Elms Desire Under the Elms Desire Under the Elms is a play by Eugene O'Neill, published in 1924, and is now considered an American classic. Along with Mourning Becomes Electra, it represents one of O'Neill's attempts to place plot elements and themes of Greek tragedy in a rural New England setting. It is essentially a... |
Eugene O'Neill | ||
| Relatively Speaking Relatively Speaking (play) Relatively Speaking is a 1965 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn, originally titled Meet My Father. The London production of Relatively Speaking in 1967 at the Duke of York's Theatre helped to launch Richard Briers' career, and it also featured Michael Hordern and Celia Johnson.-Setting:The... |
Alan Ayckbourn | ||
| Boccaccio | Kenneth Cavander | ||
| 1975 Season | Playwright | Notes | |
| Sleuth Sleuth (play) Sleuth is a 1970 play written by Anthony Shaffer. The play is set in the Wiltshire, England manor house of Andrew Wyke, an immensely successful mystery writer. His home reflects Wyke's obsession with the inventions and deceptions of fiction and his fascination with games and game-playing... |
Anthony Schaffer | ||
| The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui is a play by the German dramatist Bertolt Brecht, originally written in 1941... |
Bertolt Brecht Bertolt Brecht Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the... |
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| When You Comin' Back, Red Rider? | Mark Medoff Mark Medoff Mark Medoff is an American playwright, screenwriter, film and theatre director, actor, and professor. His play Children of a Lesser God received both the Tony Award and the Olivier Award... |
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| Quiet Caravans | Barry Dinerman | World Premiere | |
| Of Mice and Men Of Mice and Men Of Mice and Men is a novella written by Nobel Prize-winning author John Steinbeck. Published in 1937, it tells the tragic story of George Milton and Lennie Small, two displaced migrant ranch workers during the Great Depression in California, USA.... |
John Steinbeck John Steinbeck John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. was an American writer. He is widely known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden and the novella Of Mice and Men... |
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| Oh Coward! | Roderick Cook Roderick Cook Roderick Cook was an English playwright, writer, theatre director and actor of stage, television and film... |
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| 1974 Season | Playwright | Notes | |
| The Hot L Baltimore | Lanford Wilson | ||
| Twigs Twigs (play) Twigs is a play by George Furth, with incidental music by Stephen Sondheim.It consists of four vignettes involving three sisters and their mother, each focusing on one of the women as she confronts various issues with the man in her life. Emily is a recent widow, relocating to a new apartment, who... |
George Furth George Furth George Furth was an American librettist, playwright, and actor.-Biography:Furth was born George Schweinfurth in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Evelyn and George Schweinfurth... |
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| A Streetcar Named Desire A Streetcar Named Desire (play) A Streetcar Named Desire is a 1947 play written by American playwright Tennessee Williams for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1948. The play opened on Broadway on December 3, 1947, and closed on December 17, 1949, in the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. The Broadway production was... |
Tennessee Williams | ||
| Count Dracula | Ted Tiller | ||
| In Celebration | David Storey | ||
| The Chairs/The Bald Soprano The Bald Soprano La Cantatrice Chauve — translated from French as The Bald Soprano or The Bald Prima Donna — is the first play written by Franco-Romanian playwright Eugène Ionesco. Nicolas Bataille directed the premiere on May 11, 1950 at the Théâtre des Noctambules, Paris... |
Eugène Ionesco Eugène Ionesco Eugène Ionesco was a Romanian and French playwright and dramatist, and one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd... |
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| Godspell Godspell Godspell is a musical by Stephen Schwartz and John-Michael Tebelak. It opened off Broadway on May 17, 1971, and has played in various touring companies and revivals many times since, including a 2011 revival now playing on Broadway... |
Stephen Schwartz Stephen Schwartz (composer) Stephen Lawrence Schwartz is an American musical theatre lyricist and composer. In a career spanning over four decades, Schwartz has written such hit musicals as Godspell , Pippin and Wicked... and John-Michael Tebelak John-Michael Tebelak John-Michael Tebelak was an American playwright and director. He was most famous for creating the musical Godspell based on the Gospel of Saint Matthew. The music was by Stephen Schwartz... |
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| 1973 Season | Playwright | Notes | |
| No Place to Be Somebody | Charles Cordone | ||
| Old Times Old Times Old Times is a play by the Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter. It was first performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Aldwych Theatre in London on June 1, 1971. It starred Colin Blakely, Dorothy Tutin, and Vivien Merchant, and was directed by Peter Hall... |
Harold Pinter | ||
| One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (play) One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a play based on Ken Kesey's 1962 novel of the same name. Dale Wasserman's stage adaptation, with music by Teiji Ito, made its Broadway preview on November 12, 1963, its premiere on November 13, and ran until January 25, 1964 for a total of one preview and 82... |
Dale Wasserman | ||
| The Contractor | David Storey | ||
| A Conflict of Interest | Jay Broad | ||
| A Day in the Death of Joe Egg A Day in the Death of Joe Egg A Day in the Death of Joe Egg is a 1967 play by English playwright Peter Nichols, first staged at the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow, Scotland before transferring to London's West End theatres in 1968.-Plot summary:Characters* Bri* Grace* Joe* Freddie... |
Peter Nichols Peter Nichols Peter Nichols FRSL is an English writer of stage plays, film and television.Born in Bristol, England, he was educated at Bristol Grammar School, and served his compulsory National Service as a clerk in Calcutta and later in the Combined Services Entertainments Unit in Singapore where he... |
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| The Decline and Fall of the Entire World as Seen Through the Eyes of Cole Porter | Ben Bagley Ben Bagley Ben Bagley was an American musical theatre and record producer.-Career:Born in Burlington, Vermont, Bagley moved to New York City during the early 1950s, and in 1955, at age 22, he produced his first hit, Shoestring Revue, starring Beatrice Arthur and Chita Rivera , and with songs by Charles... |
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| 1972 Season | Playwright | Notes | |
| The Me Nobody Knows The Me Nobody Knows The Me Nobody Knows is a musical with music by Gary William Friedman and lyrics by Will Holt. It debuted off-Broadway in 1970 and then transferred to Broadway. It received the Obie Award and a Tony Award nomination for Best Musical... |
Gary William Friedman Gary William Friedman Gary William Friedman is an American musician and composer. He completed his undergraduate work at Brooklyn College, and did advanced training in electronic music at Columbia University.... and Will Holt Will Holt Will Holt is an American singer, songwriter, librettist and lyricist known first and primarily as a folk performer during the 1950s and 1960s and as an interpreter of the music of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht in performances and recordings with Martha Schlamme... |
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| What the Butler Saw What the Butler Saw (play) What the Butler Saw is a farce written by English playwright Joe Orton. It premièred at the Queen's Theatre in London on 5 March 1969. It was Orton's final play and the second to be performed after his death, following Funeral Games the year before.... |
Joe Orton Joe Orton John Kingsley Orton was an English playwright.In a short but prolific career lasting from 1964 until his death, he shocked, outraged and amused audiences with his scandalous black comedies... |
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| The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds is a 1964 play written by Paul Zindel, a playwright and science teacher. Zindel received the 1971 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and a New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for the work. The play's world premiere was staged in 1964 at the Alley Theatre... |
Paul Zindel Paul Zindel Paul Zindel Jr. was an American playwright, author, and educator.-Early years:Zindel was born in Tottenville, Staten Island, New York to Paul Zindel,Sr., a policeman, and Beatrice Frank, a nurse; his sister, Betty Hagen, was a year and a half older than he. Paul Zindel, Sr... |
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| Echoes | N. Richard Nash | World Premiere | |
| The Trial of the Catonsville Nine Catonsville Nine The Catonsville Nine were nine Catholic activists who burned draft files to protest the Vietnam War. On May 17, 1968 they went to the draft board in Catonsville, Maryland, took 378 draft files, brought them to the parking lot in wire baskets, dumped them out, poured homemade napalm over them, and... |
Fr. Daniel Berrigan Daniel Berrigan Daniel Berrigan, SJ is an American Catholic priest, peace activist, and poet. Daniel and his brother Philip were for a time on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list for their involvement in antiwar protests during the Vietnam war.... |
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| Moonchildren Moonchildren Moonchildren is a play by Brooklyn-based playwright Michael Weller. The play chronicles a year in the life of the "moonchildren" referred to in the title: eight college students living communally together in an off-campus attic in the mid 1960s.-Performances:The work was first performed in 1971... |
Michael Weller | ||
| Butterflies Are Free Butterflies Are Free Butterflies Are Free is a 1972 film based on a play by Leonard Gershe. The 1972 film was produced by M.J. Frankovich, released by Columbia Pictures, directed by Milton Katselas and adapted for the screen by Gershe. It was released on 6 July, 1972 in the USA.Goldie Hawn and Edward Albert starred... |
Leonard Gershe Leonard Gershe Leonard Gershe was an American playwright, screenwriter, and lyricist.Born in New York City, Gershe made his Broadway debut as a lyricist for the 1950 revue Alive and Kicking. He wrote the book for Harold Rome's musical stage adaptation of Destry Rides Again in 1959, and in 1969 a play, ... |
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| 1971 Season | Playwright | Notes | |
| Hadrian VII | Peter Luke | ||
| The Boys in the Band The Boys in the Band The Boys in the Band is a 1970 American drama film directed by William Friedkin. The screenplay by Mart Crowley is based on his Off Broadway play of the same title, Crowley penned a sequel to the play years later entitled The Men From The Boys... |
Mart Crowley | ||
| The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail is a two-act play by Robert Edwin Lee and Jerome Lawrence written in 1970. The play is based on the early life of the titular character, Henry David Thoreau, leading up to his night spent in a jail in Concord, Massachusetts... |
Jerome Lawrence Jerome Lawrence Jerome Lawrence was an American playwright and author.-Life and career:Lawrence was born Jerome Lawrence Schwartz in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of Sarah , a poet, and Samuel Schwartz, a printer. He worked for several small newspapers as a reporter/editor before moving into radio as a writer for CBS.... and Robert Lee Robert Edwin Lee Robert Edwin Lee was an American playwright and lyricist. With his writing partner, Jerome Lawrence, Lee worked for Armed Forces Radio during World War II; Lawrence and Lee became the most prolific writing partnership in radio, with such long-running series as Favorite Story among others.-Life and... |
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| Ceremonies in Dark Old Men | Lonne Elder III Lonne Elder III Lonne Elder III was an American actor, playwright and screenwriter. In 1973, he along with Suzanne de Passe became the first African Americans to be nominated for the Academy Award for writing... |
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| Plaza Suite Plaza Suite Plaza Suite is a comedy play by Neil Simon.-Plot:The play is composed of three acts, each involving different characters but all set in Suite 719 of New York City's Plaza Hotel... |
Neil Simon | ||
| A Cry of Players | William Gibson William Gibson (playwright) William Gibson was an American playwright and novelist. He graduated from the City College of New York in 1938.He was of Irish, French, German, Dutch and Russian ancestry... |
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| You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown is a 1967 musical comedy with music and lyrics by Clark Gesner, based on the characters created by cartoonist Charles M. Schulz in his comic strip Peanuts... |
Clark Gesner and John Gordon | ||
| 1970 Season | Playwright | Notes | |
| The Birthday Party The Birthday Party (play) The Birthday Party is the first full-length play by Harold Pinter and one of Pinter's best-known and most-frequently performed plays... |
Harold Pinter | On same bill as The Balcony | |
| The Balcony The Balcony The Balcony is a play by the French dramatist Jean Genet. Since Peter Zadek directed its first production at the Arts Theatre Club in London in 1957, the play has attracted many of the greatest directors of the 20th century, including Peter Brook, Erwin Piscator, Roger Blin, Giorgio Strehler, and... |
Jean Genet Jean Genet Jean Genet was a prominent and controversial French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. Early in his life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but later took to writing... |
On same bill as The Birthday Party | |
| Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead | Tom Stoppard | ||
| The Caucasian Chalk Circle The Caucasian Chalk Circle The Caucasian Chalk Circle is a play by the German modernist playwright Bertolt Brecht. An example of Brecht's epic theatre, the play is a parable about a peasant girl who rescues a baby and becomes a better mother than its natural parents.... |
Bertolt Brecht | ||
| The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie | Jay Presson Allen Jay Presson Allen Jay Presson Allen was an American screenwriter, playwright, stage director, television producer and novelist. Known for her withering wit and sometimes-off-color wisecracks, she was one of the few women making a living as a screenwriter at a time when women were a rarity in the profession... |
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| Endgame Endgame (play) Endgame, by Samuel Beckett, is a one-act play with four characters, written in a style associated with the Theatre of the Absurd. It was originally written in French ; as was his custom, Beckett himself translated it into English. The play was first performed in a French-language production at the... |
Samuel Beckett Samuel Beckett Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most... |
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| Your Own Thing Your Own Thing Your Own Thing is a rock-styled musical comedy loosely based on Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare. It premiered off-Broadway in early 1968. The music and lyrics are by Hal Hester and Danny Apolinar with the book adaptation by Donald Driver, who also directed the original production... |
Hal Hester and Danny Apolinar | ||
| 1969 Season | Playwright | Notes | |
| Celebration Celebration (musical) Celebration is a musical with a book and lyrics by Tom Jones and music by Harvey Schmidt.A musical fable set on New Year's Eve, it focuses on four characters: Orphan, an idealistic and cheerfully optimistic young man, in possession of the stained-glass eye of God, who reminds Edgar Allen Rich, a... |
Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt | ||
| The Homecoming The Homecoming The Homecoming is a two-act play written in 1964 by Nobel laureate Harold Pinter and first published in 1965. The original Broadway production won the 1967 Tony Award for Best Play and its 40th-anniversary Broadway production at the Cort Theatre was nominated for a 2008 Tony Award for "Best Revival... |
Harold Pinter | ||
| Rhinoceros Rhinoceros (play) Rhinoceros is a play by Eugène Ionesco, written in 1959. The play belongs to the school of drama known as the Theatre of the Absurd... |
Eugène Ionesco | ||
| Inadmissible Evidence Inadmissible Evidence Inadmissible Evidence is a play written by John Osborne in November 1964. It was also filmed in 1968.The protagonist of the play is William Maitland, a middle-aged English solicitor who has come to hate his entire life. Much of the play consists of lengthy monologues in which Maitland tells the... |
John Osborne John Osborne John James Osborne was an English playwright, screenwriter, actor and critic of the Establishment. The success of his 1956 play Look Back in Anger transformed English theatre.... |
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| Marat/Sade Marat/Sade The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade , almost invariably shortened to Marat/Sade, is a 1963 play by Peter Weiss... |
Peter Weiss Peter Weiss Peter Ulrich Weiss was a German writer, painter, and artist of adopted Swedish nationality. He is particularly known for his plays Marat/Sade and The Investigation and his novel The Aesthetics of Resistance.... |
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| Philadelphia, Here I Come | Brian Friel | ||
| Crabdance | Beverly Simons | World Premiere | |
| 1968 Season | Playwright | Notes | |
| Slow Dance on the Killing Ground | William Hanley | ||
| Eh? Eh? This article is about the play. For the common Canadian colloquialism, see Canadian English.Eh? is a play by Henry Livings.- Production history :... |
Henry Livings Henry Livings Henry Livings was an English playwright and screenwriter, who worked extensively in British television and theatre from the 1960s to the 1990s.-Early life and career:... |
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| Royal Hunt of the Sun | Peter Shaffer | ||
| The Lion in Winter The Lion in Winter -Synopsis:Set during Christmas 1183 at Henry II of England's château in Chinon, Anjou, Angevin Empire, the play opens with the arrival of Henry's wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, whom he has had imprisoned since 1173... |
James Goldman James Goldman James Goldman was an American screenwriter and playwright, and the brother of screenwriter and novelist William Goldman.He was born in Chicago, Illinois, and grew up primarily in Highland Park, Illinois, a Chicago suburb... |
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| Black Comedy | Peter Shaffer | On same bill as Captain Fantastick Meets the Ectomorph | |
| Captain Fantastick Meets the Ectomorph | Barry Pritchard | On same bill as Black Comedy | |
| A Delicate Balance | Edward Albee | ||
| Waiting for Godot Waiting for Godot Waiting for Godot is an absurdist play by Samuel Beckett, in which two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, wait endlessly and in vain for someone named Godot to arrive. Godot's absence, as well as numerous other aspects of the play, have led to many different interpretations since the play's... |
Samuel Beckett | ||
| 1967 Season | Playwright | Notes | |
| Luv Luv (play) Luv is a play by Murray Schisgal.A mix of absurdist humor and traditional Broadway comedy more in the Neil Simon vein, Luv concerns two college friends - misfit Harry and materialistic Milt - who are reunited when the latter stops the former from jumping off a bridge, the play's setting. Each... |
Murray Schisgal Murray Schisgal Murray Schisgal is an American playwright and screenwriter.Native New Yorker Schisgal won his first recognition for the 1963 off-Broadway double-bill The Typists and The Tiger, which won him the Drama Desk Award. His 1965 Broadway debut, Luv, earned him Tony Award nominations for Best Play and... |
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| The Deputy The Deputy The Deputy, a Christian tragedy , also known as The Representative, is a controversial 1963 play by Rolf Hochhuth which indicts Pope Pius XII for his failure to take action or speak out against The Holocaust. It has been translated into more than twenty languages... |
Rolf Hochhuth Rolf Hochhuth Rolf Hochhuth is a German author and playwright. He is best known for his 1963 drama The Deputy and remains a controversial figure for his plays and other public comments, such as his insinuation of Pope Pius XII's sympathies for Hitler's extermination of the Jews in the 1963 play The Deputy and... |
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| Out at Sea/Striptease | Sławomir Mrożek | ||
| After the Fall After the Fall (play) After the Fall is a play by American dramatist Arthur Miller. The original performance opened in New York City on January 23, 1964, directed by Elia Kazan and starring Barbara Loden and Jason Robards Jr., with an early appearance by Faye Dunaway. Kazan also collaborated with Miller on the script... |
Arthur Miller | ||
| The Great Divide | William Vaughn Moody William Vaughn Moody William Vaughn Moody was a United States dramatist and poet. Author of The Great Divide, first presented under the title of The Sabine Woman at the Garrick Theatre in Chicago on April 12, 1906... |
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| The Fantasticks | Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt | ||
| The Caretaker The Caretaker The Caretaker is a play by Harold Pinter. It was first published by both Encore Publishing and Eyre Methuen in 1960. The sixth play that Pinter wrote for stage or television production, it was his first significant commercial success... |
Harold Pinter | ||
| 1966 Season | Playwright | Notes | |
| In White America | Martin B. Duberman Martin Duberman Martin Bauml Duberman is an American historian, playwright, and gay-rights activist. He is Professor of History Emeritus at Lehman College and the Graduate School of the City University of New York and was the founder of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at the CUNY Graduate School... |
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| The Typist/The Tiger | Murray Schisgal | ||
| Tiny Alice Tiny Alice Tiny Alice, a three act play written by Edward Albee, premiered on Broadway at the Billy Rose Theatre on December 29, 1964.- Billy Rose Theatre production :... |
Edward Albee | ||
| A Thurber Carnival A Thurber Carnival A Thurber Carnival is a revue by James Thurber, adapted by the author from his stories, cartoons and casuals , nearly all of which originally appeared in The New Yorker. It was directed by Burgess Meredith... |
James Thurber James Thurber James Grover Thurber was an American author, cartoonist and celebrated wit. Thurber was best known for his cartoons and short stories published in The New Yorker magazine.-Life:... |
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| The Physicists | Friedrich Dürrenmatt Friedrich Dürrenmatt Friedrich Dürrenmatt was a Swiss author and dramatist. He was a proponent of epic theatre whose plays reflected the recent experiences of World War II. The politically active author's work included avant-garde dramas, philosophically deep crime novels, and often macabre satire... |
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| Arsenic and Old Lace Arsenic and Old Lace (play) Arsenic and Old Lace is a play by American playwright Joseph Kesselring, written in 1939. It has become best known through the film adaptation starring Cary Grant and directed by Frank Capra. The play was directed by Bretaigne Windust, and opened on January 10, 1941. On September 25, 1943, the... |
Joseph Kesselring Joseph Kesselring Joseph Otto Kesselring was an American writer and playwright known best for his play Arsenic and Old Lace, written in 1939 and originally entitled "Bodies in Our Cellar." He was born in New York City to Henry and Frances Kesselring. His father's parents were immigrants from Germany. His mother was... |
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| The Collection The Collection (play) The Collection is a 1961 play by Harold Pinter featuring two couples, James and Stella and Harry and Bill. It is a comedy laced with typically "Pinteresque" ambiguity and "implications of threat and strong feeling produced through colloquial language, apparent triviality, and long pauses"... /The Room |
Harold Pinter | ||
| 1965 Season | Playwright | Notes | |
| Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama’s Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feeling So Sad | Arthur Kopit | ||
| Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a play by Tennessee Williams. One of Williams's best-known works and his personal favorite, the play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1955... |
Tennessee Williams | ||
| Who'll Save the Plowboy? | Frank Gilroy | ||
| Dark of the Moon Dark of the Moon (play) Dark of the Moon is a dramatic stage play by Howard Richardson and William Berney which had a ten-month run on Broadway in 1945, followed by numerous college and high-school productions.... |
H. Richardson Howard Richardson (playwright) Howard Dixon Richardson was an American playwright, best known for the 1945 play Dark of the Moon.Born in Spartanburg, South Carolina, Richardson graduated in 1938 from the University of North Carolina and then traveled through Europe , returning to the University of North Carolina in 1940 for his... and William Berney |
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| The Private Ear/The Public Eye | Peter Shaffer |
- Source (except as noted):
External links
- ACT Theatre, official site