We are so excited to see new season announcements as theatres around Atlanta are returning to in-person performances! With performances starting in less than a month, Actor’s Express is kicking off their ’21-’22 season with an Olympics-themed play, followed by an Off-Broadway hit musical, a world premiere play, and more.
Click here to check out the rest of our “Back to the Theatre” roundups!
Red Speedo
By Lucas Hnath
August 11 – September 5, 2021
On the eve of Olympic qualifying trials, a champion swimmer’s future rests in the balance. If he makes the team he will sign a lucrative endorsement deal worth millions. But when performance enhancing drugs are found in his team’s locker room fridge, he must tread water past the rumors to avoid losing it all. With rapid-fire dialogue that builds to an electrifying, twist-filled climax, Red Speedo will leave you breathless. From the acclaimed author of A Doll’s House Part 2 and The Christians.
Heathers: The Musical
Music & Lyrics by Laurence O’Keefe & Kevin Murphy
September 29 – October 17, 2021
A Co-Production between Actor’s Express and Oglethorpe University Theatre; Performed at the Conant Performing Arts Center.
Social outcast Veronica has found her way into the most powerful and feared clique at Westerburg High – the Heathers. But when she falls for the dangerous and sexy transfer student J.D., she soon finds that her “teenage angst bullshit has a body count.” So grab your slushee, bust out your best scrunchie and settle in for the wild ride of this hit musical based on the 1989 cult classic film starring Winona Ryder.
WORLD PREMIERE!
Hometown Boy
By Keiko Green
November 3-28, 2021
James hasn’t been back to his rural Georgia hometown in over a decade, but reluctantly returns to check in on his father, whose behavior has become worryingly erratic. And since the South has a way of holding onto secrets, he soon stumbles into a life he thought he had left behind as a child. That stench in the air isn’t just his father’s decaying house, but the rotten core of long-buried secrets teeming just under the surface and ready to explode.
Intimate Apparel
By Lynn Nottage
January 5 – February 6, 2022
In 1905 New York, an independent woman named Esther creates beautiful lingerie for clients that range from white society mavens on the Upper East Side to prostitutes in the Tenderloin district. As she works toward her dream of opening a beauty salon for Black women, she earns the trust, respect and friendship of her diverse customers. And when she enters into a romantic correspondence with a mysterious pen pal, her quest for empowerment and self-actualization takes unexpected turns. A landmark play from MacArthur Genius Grant recipient and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage. Starring Atlanta favorite Cynthia D. Barker as Esther.
Bootycandy
By Robert O’Hara
March 2-27, 2022
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.
Sunset Baby
By Dominique Morisseau
April 20 – May 15, 2022
When Black Liberation activist Kenyatta Shakur comes back to the world after prison, he finds himself widowed and alone. His fraught reunion with his daughter Nina only intensifies when she refuses to release to him letters from his late wife that are both personally and historically significant. In the familial tug-of-war that ensues, Kenyatta and Nina must find a way to confront their shared history. A crackling play from MacArthur Genius Grant recipient Dominique Morisseau, one of the most acclaimed playwrights in America today.
Desire Under the Elms
By Eugene O’Neill
June 1 – July 3, 2022
In this scorching classic that pulses with the intensity of a fever dream, tyrannical patriarch Ephraim Cabot returns to his rural New England farm with a seductive new wife, Abbie, hoping to produce a new heir to the estate. Fearing disinheritance, his impetuous youngest son Eben hates his new stepmother. But hatred gives way to lust, unleashing tragic consequences on the Cabot family forever. A great masterwork by one of America’s most preeminent dramatists.
Lizzie
Music by Steven Cheslik-DeMeyer & Alan Stevens Hewitt
Lyrics by Steven Cheslik-DeMeyer & Tim Maner
Book by Tim Maner
July 27 – September 4, 2022
“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?
Season subscription packages are now on sale and can be purchased online or by calling the Box Office at 404-607-7469, Tuesday through Friday from 12-5 PM. Single tickets will go on sale on July 6. Patrons may also e-mail the box office staff at [email protected] with any questions. Visit Actors-Express.com for more information.
