Actor’s Express has announced their 33rd season, promising it will let audiences “laugh, cry, jump in their seats, and lean into the experience of being alive in the world today–and be able to do that together.” Featuring three plays and three musicals, the 2020-21 season kicks off this summer and concludes in mid-2021.
“At a time in which we need shared catharsis more than ever. Season 33 offers a panoply of experiences that engage the imagination and stir the heart,” Actor’s Express Artistic Director Freddie Ashley says.
Check out the full lineup below!
Lizzie – Summer 2020
- Music by Steven Cheslik-DeMeyer, Alan Stevens Hewitt and Tim Maner
- Directed by Jennifer Alice Acker
About Lizzie
“Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one.” Or did she? This blistering rock musical upends one of the most intriguing crimes in our country’s history, which has captured our collective imagination since that bloody night in 1892. Was Lizzie Borden a cold-blooded killer or a victim of the Victorian patriarchy?
The Thin Place – Fall 2020
- By Lucas Hnath
- Directed by Freddie Ashley
About The Thin Place
Everyone who ever died is still here – and Linda knows how to talk to all of them. Maybe you can too if you listen–if you really listen. In this startling new thriller by the celebrated playwright of The Christians and A Doll’s House Part 2, Actor’s Express transforms into an intimate, eerie séance in which the truth burrows into the “thin place,” the delicate boundary between our world and the next.
Hedwig and the Angry Inch – Holiday Season 2020
- Music & Lyrics by Stephen Trask
- Book by John Cameron Mitchell
- Director TBA
About Hedwig and the Angry Inch
Hedwig for the holidays! Join “internationally ignored” rock singer Hedwig as she searches the world for stardom and love in this groundbreaking musical that has become one of the great cult classics of all time. Hedwig and the Angry Inch celebrates everyone who’s ever felt like a misfit with such instant classics as “Sugar Daddy,” “Wig in a Box” and “Midnight Radio” in a setlist that will have you jamming along and unleashing your own inner rock star.
Merrily We Roll Along – Winter 2021
- Music & Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
- Book by George Furth
- Based on the original play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart
- Directed by Freddie Ashley
About Merrily We Roll Along
Franklin, Mary and Charley juggle the tensions between ambition and friendship in Stephen Sondheim’s triumphant musical about old friends, growing up and bending with the road. Told in backward chronology, we start in the present as the trio’s friendships are stretched to a breaking point, journeying backward in time through all their successes and struggles, all the way to their first night together as they look innocently ahead to a future full of possibility. One of Sondheim’s most fascinating pieces of work, it features arguably his greatest score, including such enduring standards as “Good Thing Going,” “Our Time” and “Not a Day Goes By.”
Bootycandy – Spring 2021
- By Robert O’Hara
- Directed by Martin Damien Wilkins
About Bootycandy
Join Sutter as he propels through a kaleidoscopic odyssey through his childhood home, church, dive bars, seedy motels – and one riotously funny phone conversation about very inappropriate baby names. One of the most acclaimed satirical comedies of the decade, Bootycandy is an audacious series of subversive vignettes that explore what it means to grow up gay and black in America.
Oh, to Be Pure Again! – Late Spring/Early Summer 2021
- A World Premiere by Kira Rockwell
- Director TBA
About Oh, to be Pure Again
During a hot summer at a fundamentalist church camp in Texas, the occupants of the senior girls’ cabin search for something bigger than themselves. An idealistic young counselor works to shepherd the girls through a delicate phase of self-discovery, only to be confronted with challenges to her own worldview. The young women find themselves crashing into the uneasy tension between obedience and rebellion in a culture that is obsessed with their sexual purity.
