Actors Theatre to Present ANNAPURNA, Beginning 1/16

Actors Theatre flings open the doors on one couple's unexpected and alternatively comic and conflicted reunion when Annapurna comes to the stage at Black Theatre Troupe, 1333 E. Washington Street, from Jan. 16 to Feb. 1, 2015.

Directed by Matthew Wiener, The New York Times characterized Sharr White's breathtaking story about the longevity of love as an "unpacking and repackaging of the tangled history" between Emma, who walked out on her cowboy-poet husband 20 years earlier, and Ulysses, who lives mostly without clothes in a grimy trailer in the mountains above a tiny Colorado town.

Two of the Valley's most versatile - and favorite - actors return to Actors Theatre for Annapurna, Cathy Dresbach as Emma and Kirk Jackson as Ulysses.

Emma doesn't just politely knock on Ulysses' door, but barges into the trailer where he's dying of emphysema and uses a breathing apparatus stuffed in a backpack. Twenty years earlier, Emma snuck out in the middle of the night with their five-year-old son, Sam, and disappeared.

Emma tracked Ulysses down after Sam discovered a pile of letters Ulysses wrote to him that the boy never saw. Turns out, Emma hadn't seem them either and she is trying to preempt Sam's arrival at the trailer.

What happens in between has been described as a "visceral, profound and sometimes funny meditation on love and loss." The Associated Press wrote that Annapurna puts "some of the many ways people can destroy their own happiness on full, tragic display."

"Cathy and Kirk are perfect for this play, and are going to rock the audience," Wiener said. "I'm thrilled to be working again with them. Kirk and I go back more than 25 years and I've worked with Cathy for nearly 15 years."

Creative team for Annapurna includes Jeff Thomson, set design; Lois Myers, costume design; Tim Monson, lighting design; and Christopher Neumeyer, sound design. Aaron Wheeler is stage manager.

Tickets are $40 for general admission, $54 for VIP reserved seats, $35 for seniors 65 and over and $20 students with ID.

Tickets can be purchased through the Actors Theatre website at www.actorstheatrephx.org or by calling (602) 888-0368.

Annapurna will be followed by Stage Kiss by Sara Ruhl, March 13-29. It is the third Ruhl play produced by Actors Theatre after Dead Man's Cell Phone and In the Next Room (Or the Vibrator Play). It's a story of art imitating life and life imitating art when two actors with history are thrown together as romantic leads in a forgotten 1930s melodrama. The two quickly lose touch with reality as the story onstage follows them off stage. Stage Kiss captures Ruhl's singular voice and is a charming tale about what happens when lovers share a stage kiss - or when actors share a real one.

The final production is The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, May 1-17, a dramatic adaptation of her award-winning best-selling memoir which the New York Times called "an indelible portrait of a four-decade-long marriage." In The Year of Magical Thinking, Didion transforms the story of the sudden and unexpected loss of her husband and their only daughter into a stunning and powerful one-woman play.

For more information, visit www.actorstheatrephx.org.

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