TACT's 2015-16 Season to Feature HARD LOVE & WIDOWERS' HOUSES

TACT/The Actors Company Theatre has announced its 2015/2016 Season, the company's 23rd. The critically-acclaimed and award-winning Off-Broadway company that "reveals, reclaims and reimagines great plays of literary merit" will offer two works that delve into the notion of choice, free will, faith, assumption and morality. Hard Love, the searing 2003 play by Israeli playwright Motti Lerner, and George Bernard Shaw's Widowers' Houses, one of his most prescient and timely plays written in 1892, will be presented at The Beckett Theatre (410 West 42nd Street - between 9th & 10th Avenues) on Theatre Row.

TACT will open the 2015/16 season with the Off Broadway premiere of Hard Love. Set in the Ultra-orthodox Mea She'arim district in Jerusalem, Hard Love is the fiercely romantic and passionate story of Hannah and Zvi, a divorced couple whose lives are thrown back together when the teenaged children from their second marriages start to become romantically involved. The enormous divide between the faithful and the non-believing is attempted to be bridged by the power of an undying earthly love. Which will win out? How will they navigate this greatest of all divides? Scott Alan Evans directs.

Performances will begin on Tuesday, September 29th at 7:00pm. Opening Night is Sunday, October 11th at 6:00pm. Performances will continue through Saturday, October 31st.

TACT will continue its 2015/16 season in March with a reimagining of George Bernard Shaw's Widowers' Houses, a co-production with Gingold Theatrical Group. Young gentleman doctor Harry Trench and his companion William Cokane are touring the continent when Harry meets a lovely young woman, Blanche Sartorius, daughter of a wealthy London landowner. Blanche and Harry's admiration is mutual and their happy union seems assured until the unsavory source of the Sartorius fortune comes to light. David Staller directs.

"Working together with GTG is such a natural for TACT that the only real question about it is why it took us so long to make it happen," says Mr. Evans. "Widowers' Houses is Shaw's first and a rarely seen play, and we can't think of a better person to interpret it for a modern audience than David."

"As a long-time member of the TACT company," Mr. Staller adds, "I'm delighted to have the opportunity to share Shaw with this fine group of artists. Shaw's humanitarian precepts, razor-sharp wit and rascally insights offered the inspiration for the creation of GTG, and his standing as one of our greatest playwrights ties in beautifully with TACT's mission of reimagining exceptional plays of literary merit."

Performances will begin on Tuesday, March 1st, 2016. Opening Night is Sunday, March 13th at 6:00pm. Performances will continue through April 2nd, 2016.

"Though told from diametrically opposed viewpoints and from two far-flung eras, each of the masterful works we are presenting this season brings you face to face with life-changing and life-defining moments of choice where future lives hangs in the balance," explainsMr. Evans. "If that's not dramatic, we don't know what is!"

The cast and creative team for both productions will be announced at a later date.

TACT's Mainstage season is augmented by its celebrated Salon Series of concert readings as well as its play development program,newTACTics, both of which are presented in their studio space at 900 Broadway.

As the company heads into its 23rd Season, there are a few exciting internal changes to announce. Jenn Thompson, one of TACTs Co-Artistic Directors for the past four years, has announced that she is stepping down from her Artistic Director post, but will remain a very active part of the TACT artistic family. "I am beyond honored to have been given the opportunity to serve and beyond proud to have played a small role in helping to establish TACT as one of New York's most highly regarded theatre companies," she extols. Mr. Evans, the remaining Founding Artistic Director, will continue on with the support of long-time company members, Nora Chester and Greg McFadden in the newly appointed roles of Associate Artistic Directors.

Hard Love and Widowers' Houses will both have the following performance schedule: Tuesday at 7:00pm (new time), Wednesday, & Thursday at 7:30pm; Friday at 8pm; Saturday at 2pm & 8pm; Sunday at 2pm. Tickets are $15-$62 and will be available through TeleCharge - www.telecharge.com/(212) 239-6200. They will also be available at the Theatre Row box office (410 West 42nd Street - between 9th & 10th Avenues) between 12pm and 8pm daily.

TACT/The Actors Company Theatre (Scott Alan Evans, Executive Artistic Director and Nora Chester & Greg McFadden, Associate Artistic Directors) is a company of theatre artists that reveals, reclaims, and reimagines great plays of literary merit, creating an intimate theatre experience for its audience by focusing on the text and the actor's ability to bring it to life.

TACT's celebrated company of actors was drawn together in 1992 by a love of the literature of the theatre. Since that time, they have grown to become a true ensemble: a group that has developed a common vocabulary and a technique based on their specific artistic vision and collective body of work. TACT Company Members, whose cumulative experience includes scores of significant roles on and off Broadway, in the country's finest regional theatres, and in many films and television shows, have received Emmy, Obie, Outer Critics Circle and Drama Desk Awards, in addition to several Tony nominations.

Heralded by the Wall Street Journal as "The 2012 Company of the Year," TACT has enjoyed a run of successful productions since it first made its move from its "in-concert" style performances to fully-staged productions in the 2006/07 season. Since that time TACT has become a celebrated presence Off-Broadway with their presentations of such diverse and critically-acclaimed works as David Storey'sHome, Edward Bond's The Sea, Milan Stitt's The Runner Stumbles, Tennessee Williams' The Eccentricities of a Nightingale (included inThe New York Times "Top 10 Theatre Picks for 2008"), Sir Alan Ayckbourn's Bedroom Farce, Arthur Miller's Incident at Vichy, Sidney Howard's The Late Christopher Bean, T.S Eliot's The Cocktail Party (included in the Wall Street Journal's "Best of 2010" list), Vaclav Havel's The Memorandum, John Cecil Holm and George Abbott's Three Men on a Horse, A.R. Gurney's Children, the 2012 Drama Desk-nominated production of Neil Simon's Lost in Yonkers, Brian Friel's Lovers, Anita Loos' Happy Birthday, William Inge's Natural Affection,and Christopher Durang's Beyond Therapy. Last season, the company presented Frank Marcus' The Killing of Sister George and Beth Henley's Abundance (Winner, "Best Play Revival" - Off-Broadway Alliance).

Gingold Theatrical Group, now in its 10th year, celebrates human rights using the work and precepts of George Bernard Shaw as its guide. GTG has carved a permanent niche for this work in New York City with its monthly Project Shaw readings at Symphony Space and the annual Shaw New York festival, which includes full productions along with symposiums, concerts and new play readings. GTG, which has also presented plays by Wilde, Ibsen and Chekhov, is the first group anywhere to present performances of all of Shaw's 65 plays.

To post a comment, you must register and login.