Thank you to all of our subscribing members! We hope that this year's plays – this year's conversation – spark emotion, thought, enjoyment and a sense of connection to our world for you.

We also hope that you feel a connection with ACT, that your "subscription" is more than a collection of tickets. We hope you feel that you are as much a part of the experience as the playwright, director, actor, designer and other artisans who make theatre at ACT. We continue to strive to deepen the relationship between audience and artists and consider you a member of the ACT creative team.

The 2009 Mainstage season is a soaring composition of theatre, music, art, dance and more and you'll find the line up below. When you sign up for the 2009 season, you'll get so much more than just these six productions. Through the Central Heating Lab, we will continue to program innovative companion pieces for our plays, develop new work and partner with local artists in cabaret, music, dance, spoken word, film, and performance and visual art.

With your 2009 subscription – your ACT membership – you'll receive special invitations and offers to participate in all of our programming.

Thank you for your love of contemporary theatre and your ongoing participation. On behalf of everyone at ACT, we invite you to renew or order a new subscription today!

Kurt Beattie
Artistic Director

Carlo Scandiuzzi
Executive Director

2008 Subscribers

Choose your plays and order your subscription here.
You didn't subscribe this year? Join us for 2009 – order here.

Thanks for subscribing!

ACT 2009 Season

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher
from the novella Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson | Directed by R. Hamilton Wright
Previews: April 10 - 15
Opens: April 16 | Closes: May 10
Jeffrey Hatcher has seen the Victorians, and they are us. In his inventive retelling of the classic thriller, four different actors play Henry Jekyll's depraved alter ego. With its observations on the blurry line between good and evil, audiences will savor this show's psychological musings as much as its classic melodrama. And if you think this timeless story just might say something about how we live today, well...the doctor is in.

"Hatcher has written a play that honors the original, but gives a more complex interpretation of the dual nature of man . . . It's a dark and disturbing story liberally peppered with humor." —Arizona Daily Star

Below the Belt
By Richard Dresser
Featuring acclaimed actor Judd Hirsch
Previews: May 22 - 27
Opens: May 28 | Closes: June 21
ACT is honored to welcome acclaimed actor Judd Hirsch (Ordinary People, television's Taxi and Numb3rs) in this farcical skewering of globalized corporate culture. Somewhere, in an anonymous factory cranking out units of some unnamed product, three men try to maintain some semblance of humanity and self despite a crushingly conformist and hypermasculine bureaucracy. Cross the sitcom The Office with Samuel Beckett, and the results might look like something like this—darkly funny, and disconcertingly familiar.

"A side-splitting look at dog-eat-dog workplace politics." —Fort Worth Star-Telegram

the break/s: a mixtape for the stage
Presented by the Hansberry Project at ACT
By Marc Bamuthi Joseph | Directed by Michael John Garces; choreography by Stacy Printz; set and video design by David Szlasa; lighting design by James Clotfelter; original music by Ajayi Lumumba
Previews: June 17
Opens: June 18 | Closes: July 12
"Hip-hop renaissance man" Marc Bamuthi Joseph is an accomplished dancer, an award-winning poet and a passionate educator. His new play – the break/s – features Joseph's unique fusion of movement and theater; a powerhouse mixture of dance, sound, story, and visual imagery. With two turntables, a video jockey and Joseph's virtuosity, the break/s is an enthralling piece of performance magic. Drawing on interviews and documentary footage, this collaboration between performer, score and projected image explodes the boundaries of theater, dance and film and explores the conflicts between public identity and private identity in our globalized, multi-everything era.

"Sharp elegant and always urgent verse that harnesses the grit and boogie down power of hip hop as well as the singular beauty and sophistication of contemporary dance." —San Francisco Chronicle

"This powerhouse performance has sold out theatres and electrified audiences around the country."

Das Barbecü
Book and Lyrics by Jim Luigs | Music by Scott Warrender | Directed by Stephen Terrell
Previews: July 31 - August 5
Opens: August 6 | Closes: September 6
Seattle Opera originally commissioned this comic adaptation of Wagner's Ring Cycle in 1991. This year, The Ring returns—and so, lest we take it too seriously, does Das Barbecü. It's a lightening-paced musical that grafts the plot of Götterdämmerung onto the plains of Texas. Big hair, big hats, and wonderful music—including an infectious ode to guacamole and a tender ditty entitled "Hog Tie Your Man"—make this show a blast for opera buffs and anybody who just loves a good time.

"The delicious fun of Das Barbecü is the deadpan way it superimposes the weirdest ancient Germanic lore onto a batch of down-home, straight-shootin' folk." —Seattle Times

Runt of the Litter
Written and performed by Bo Eason | Directed by Larry Moss.
Previews: September 18 - 23
Opens: September 24 | Closes: October 11
Are you ready for some football?!? In this acclaimed one-man show, former Houston Oiler Bo Eason takes you down to the locker room and deep into the psyche of a pro with twin obsessions: winning a Super Bowl and vanquishing his star-quarterback brother. Snapping from comedy to drama and back, Eason spares no brutal detail in his depiction of the football field as an epic battleground. He is equally unflinching in reminding us that being part of the family can be a full-contact sport.

". . . written and performed with such a compelling combination of authenticity and semi-autobiographical detail that truth and art become one and the same." —Variety

Rock 'n' Roll
By Tom Stoppard | Directed by Kurt Beattie
Previews: October 9 - 14
Opens: October 15 | Closes: November 8
When the Soviet hammer falls on Prague Spring, Jan returns to his native city to rescue two things—socialism and his mother. His only luggage: a suitcase full of rock albums. This show won raves on Broadway, and it's no wonder—Stoppard's writing, like the best music, invigorates your mind along with your spirit. The relationship of self to state and of body to mind are just some of the ideas he explores, with help from Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones, The Velvet Underground, and many others.

"Astounding, funny, wise and triumphant. Rock 'N' Roll renews your awareness that history is what happens while we live our day-to-day lives. I left the theater feeling elated." —New York Magazine

SPECIAL OFFER TO SUBSCRIBERS ONLY:

Receive up to 25% off tickets! ACT will provide you with a discount code to purchase tickets online at The Paramount when you renew or purchase a new 2009 ACT subscription.
AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY
On tour at The Paramount
October 27-Nov 1
Winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and Tony Award® for Best Play, Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre production of AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY is a grand, gripping new play which tells the story of the Westons, a large extended clan that comes together at their rural Oklahoma homestead when the alcoholic patriarch disappears. Forced to confront unspoken truths and astonishing secrets, the family must also contend with matriarch Violet, a pill-popping, deeply unsettled woman at the center of this storm. AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY is a rare theatrical event—a large-scale work filled with unforgettable characters, a powerful tale told with unflinching honesty.

"AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY is flat-out, without qualification, the most exciting new American play Broadway has seen in years." —The New York Times

Titles, dates and venues subject to change.