Actors' Theatre is Thrilled to Announce Their 36th Season

On September 29, The Actors Theatre will launch its new season with the West Michigan premiere of one of the most talked-about plays of the last decade - Mr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play by Anne Washburn. Mr. Burns opens with a group of people attempting to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. The one thing these folks have in common? The Simpsons.

In order to distract themselves from the dangerous unknown around them, they begin to tell the story of one particular Simpsons episode, Cape Feare. Act 2 takes place 7 years later and we begin to see how their retelling of this Simpsons episode has become foundation for a theatrical group - telling important and nostalgic stories to the new society. Act 3, set 75 years in the future - two generations later - shows how these nostalgic stories mixed with The Simpsons have become mythologies to the future society.

Mr. Burns is a captivating look at the creation and alteration of pop-culture and mythology, the importance of storytelling in society, and the creation of culture when the lack of electricity has rendered digital mediums useless.

During the 3 weeks surrounding the 2016 presidential election, the company is excited to produce the rock band Green Day's electrifying musical American Idiot. American Idiot is a rock musical utilizing Green Day's music as its heart and backbone to tell the story of American revolution against stagnant systems and archaic mindsets. The show follows three young men as they search to discover meaning for their lives. Made up of a strong ensemble of 15, American Idiot, will rock your senses and pull on your heart.

After just closing a highly successful (Tony Award-nominated) run on Broadway, the company will also be producing the Michigan premiere of Hand to God by Robert Askins. This devilishly hilarious and poignant play follows Jason, a troubled boy in a small rural Texas town. Unable to deal with the grief of his father's death, Jason and his equally troubled mother join a puppet troupe at their local church. As Jason works on creating his puppet, his deep dark anger and pain begins taking on a powerful and frightening life of its own through his sock puppet, Tyrone. Hand to God is poignant in this tumultuous time when humanity is crying to be heard and often feels like no one will stop and listen. As a New York Times reviewer said of the play, "Pick up a newspaper and you read another grim report about men and women little older than Jason succumbing to far more destructive passions. Maybe if more of the world's troubled youth discharged their demons with the help of sock puppets, things might not look so grim."

In April they will produce the 2013 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Disgraced by Ayad Akhtar. One of the most important works in America right now, Disgraced explores Islamaphobia and being identified as Muslim in America post-9/11. The story centers around Amir who has spent his life removing himself from his Pakistani heritage in order to be a successful New York City lawyer, and his wife, a white Anglo-Saxon protestant (WASP), is getting her artistic inspiration from Arab art forms. Along with their friends (a Jewish art dealer and an African-American assistant), Disgraced is a powerful and unique look at identity, relationships, and the power of fear.

They close the season in June with an interactive and experiential telling of the Stonewall Riot with the Michigan premiere of Hit the Wall by Ike Holter. It's the summer of '69 and the death of music icon Judy Garland has emboldened her gay followers. A routine police raid on an underground Greenwich Village hotspot erupts into a full-scale riot, the impetus of the modern gay rights movement. That's the well-known, oft-rehearsed myth of Stonewall, anyhow. Smash that myth against the vivid imagination of Chicago playwright Ike Holter, add a howling live rock 'n roll band, and you get the play, Hit the Wall. Remixing this historic confrontation reveals ten unlikely revolutionaries caught in the turmoil and fighting to claim, "I was there".

September 29-October 8: Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play by Anne Washburn
October 27-November 12: American Idiot Music by Green Day and Billie Joe Armstrong. Book by Bille Joe Armstrong and Michael Mayer
February 16-March4: Hand to God by Robert Askins
April 13-22: Disgraced by Ayad Akhtar
June 15-24: Hit the Wall by Ike Holter

Performances are 8pm Thursdays-Saturdays
Ticket pricing: $28, adult; $22, Senior/Student; $10 Student Rush (available one hour before performance)
For tickets: www.atgr.org or 616.234.3946
For artwork, more information, or interviews, contact: info@atgr.org

Actors' Theatre Grand Rapids is proud to be producing the best in entertaining, innovative, challenging, and thought-provoking theatrical works in West Michigan.

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