The Resident Acting Co Announces Fall 2021 Lineup

The Resident Acting Company, formed three years ago by members of the Pearl Theater Company, has been producing Play Dates With The RAC throughout the pandemic. The RAC has chosen two plays for this fall that will be first held on Zoom and then performed live. They picked two plays that they think will resonate in a church setting and reflect a host of our current societal issues, and will also be entertaining.

The Play Dates on Zoom are hosted by Kate Farrington, Artistic Associate. These evenings will explore the background of the play and playwright, audience members will enjoy live performances from the script by members of the Resident Acting Company as well as guest artists, and they will end with a Q&A session when the audience can join the conversation.

The live and in person performance of the same play will follow in a few weeks, and they will be held in a beautiful church on the Upper West Side - St. Ignatius of Antioch.

Prior to the pandemic, The Resident Acting Co had been performing script in hand readings of classic plays as well as new works to great acclaim and sold out houses at The Players for a couple of years, and during the pandemic has had great success with this book club styled event - Play Dates.

Artistic Director Bradford Cover commented, "We thought we should find a space where we could all feel safe, and also do something interesting. St. Ignatius of Antioch is a gorgeous church, and a great framework for these two plays. Antigone is so much about religious belief but also how it is reflected in our personal belief, our personal code of ethics. Androcles and the Lion is very funny, and I think it will work well surrounded by the trappings of a Christian church, as it pokes fun at christians and heathens alike. It also contains a very apt morality story for our times."

The series begins this fall with Sophocles' Antigone on October 14th at 6PM on Zoom. When King Creon decrees that Antigone's brother, a traitor to his city, must lie unburied and unmoored, she risks everything to defy the order, ready to destroy herself rather than betray her brother. Creon in turn will be damned before this child overturns the will of the state. Sophocles' Antigone plunges us into a tense, angry confrontation between politics and faith, between youth and age, between country and family-and no one will escape the devastation.

The live and in person staged reading of Antigone will be on October 25th at 7PM at St Ignatius of Antioch, and will be directed by company member Rachel Botchan.

NOTE: All audience members will be required to show valid Photo ID and valid proof of full Covid 19 vaccination before entering the church, and will be required to wear appropriate face coverings at all times while in the building in accordance with CDC guidelines.

The third event will take place on November 18th at 6PM on Zoom and will feature Androcles and the Lion by George Bernard Shaw. A lion has a spot of bother with a thorn. A would-be martyr can't quite stop roaring for battle. A rather chagrined tailor walks into the jaws of death. And the gloriously gory sacrifice envisioned by members of the budding Christian faith . . . might just resolve itself happily before teatime. In Androcles and the Lion George Bernard Shaw, with his usual good humor, ponders what sort of person throws another to the lions for political expediency-and just as importantly, what sort of person lets themselves be thrown?

The live and in person staged reading of Androcles and the Lion will be on December 6th at 7PM at St Ignatius of Antioch.

NOTE: All audience members will be required to show valid Photo ID and valid proof of full Covid 19 vaccination before entering the church, and will be required to wear appropriate face coverings at all times while in the building in accordance with CDC guidelines.

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