ACT Announces IN THE NEXT ROOM, New Voices & More for Upcoming Events

ACT - A Contemporary Theatre offers up something for everyone! Sarah Ruhl's tender, electric new comedy hit, In the Next Room, or the vibrator play lights up the Mainstage, while the Central Heating Lab keeps things cooking with steamy performances all month long!

RAWSTOCK Short Film Festival returns with more entertainment per minute than previously thought possible. Contemporary Classics' songwriter showcase NEW VOICES returns, as does Ian Bell's popular Seattle Confidential, ready to spill the deepest darkest secrets from your (or your seatmate's) past. TheFilmSchool's amazing-and amazingly free!-Caught in the ACT series brings new screenplays to life, as does the Icicle Creek Theatre Festival, which first introduced ACT audiences to this year's hit Mainstage production, Pilgrims Musa and Sheri in the New World.

Summer wraps up with music and dancing, including the return of The Love Markets with Summer Nacht, while Cordaviva makes their ACT-debut with a spicy blend of rhythms stemming from Africa, Brazil, and Cuba. And if that's not enough to get your blood pumping, The Beebo Brinker Pulp Cabaret, adapted from Ann Bannon's iconic lesbian pulp fiction novels of the 1950s and ‘60s, is sure to get the job done.

In the Next Room, or the vibrator play by Sarah Ruhl
Directed by Kurt Beattie
A Mainstage Play
Through August 28
Tickets: start at $37.50 (adults) $15/$20 (students/ 25 & under) or included with the ACTPass
In a prim upper class Victorian home, a gentleman doctor has innocently invented a most extraordinary and mysterious device for treating "hysteria." When his increasingly despondent wife overhears the strange sounds emanating from the operating theatre and sees patients leaving in the pink of health, she is compelled to investigate-even if it means risking domesticity for desire. Ranging from the tender to the farcical, this smart comedy ponders love, sex, marriage, intimacy, and how electricity came along to fuse them. Featuring the incredible talents of Jeff Cummings, Jennifer Sue Johnson, Deborah King, Michael Patten, Mary Kae Irvin, Tracy Michelle Hughes, and Connor Toms.

TheFilmSchool: Caught in the ACT
A Central Heating Lab Event
August 1
Tickets: FREE, or included with the ACTPass | RSVP to nate@thefilmschool.com
The Film School presents another year of their popular series, featuring staged screenplay readings from outstanding alumni-written scripts, directed and read by Seattle's top professional directors and actors. Each evening's reading is followed by a Q&A session with the screenwriter, director, actors, and cast. Readings are an important step that not only showcase the extraordinary work of alumni, but also help in developing, refining, and improving their screenplays, all with audience input.

Ian Bell's Seattle Confidential - Adventures Abroad
A Central Heating Lab Event
August 8
Tickets: Adults $15, $10 students w/ ID and seniors 65+, or included with the ACTPass
Everyone has a few stories that they would never tell their family, should never tell their friends...but perhaps they could tell a room full of strangers. Seattle Confidential makes this a reality - with the help of Seattle's finest actors and a cloak of anonymity. This new quarterly series presents a different provocative topic on which Seattleites are invited to anonymously share their most personal stories. Drop-boxes are placed throughout the city, and a secure website is set up to accept anonymous submissions. Host Ian Bell and his intrepid team bring the most intriguing stories to life, on the stage. This quarter's theme: Adventures Abroad.

Cordaviva
A Central Heating Lab Event
August 12
Tickets: Adults $12, $8 students w/ ID & 25 and under or included with the ACTPass
Get up and dance to Cordaviva's cosmopolitan blend of rhythms stemming from Africa, Brazil, and Cuba!
Cordaviva is a 9-piece powerhouse of original dance music inspired by the disparate rhythms and styles of the African diaspora. Originally the brainchild of Seattle singer Ben Harris and guitarist Don Keller, the band has expanded to include members from the Senegalese Afro-Pop group Safal and the Brazilian group Os Malandros.
Punchy bright horns compliment sublime vocal harmonies (sung in five languages), ethereal guitars, and relentlessly driving percussion. Cordaviva's influences stem from musical legends such as Nigeria's Fela Kuti, Guinea's Bembeya Jazz, as well as the Brazilian and Afro-Cuban sounds of artists like Caetano Veloso and Mongo Santamaria.

Contemporary Classics: NEW VOICES
A Central Heating Lab Event
August 15
Tickets: Adults $20, $15 students w/ ID
Another great installment of Contemporary Classics' songwriter showcase, hosted by Artistic Director Brandon Ivie (2010 Gregory Award, Person To Watch) and with music direction by RJ Tancioco (Gregory Award winner, Music/Sound Design). Proven to be one of Seattle's most exciting musical theatre events, NEW VOICES is a Seattle musical theatre institution featuring the most exciting up-and-coming composers this country has to offer. An exciting blend of Sondheim and pop/rock, this next generation of composers are writing musicals about road trips, hostage situations, deranged prom queens, Jack Kerouac and everything in between.

RAWSTOCK Short Film Festival
A Central Heating Lab Event
August 17
Tickets: $10, or included with the ACTPass
Now in its fourth year of partnership with ACT's Central Heating Lab, RAWSTOCK Short Film Festival continues to be Seattle's destination for cutting-edge animation, politically incorrect comedy, and relentless grindhouse cinema.

The Love Markets: Summer Nacht
A Central Heating Lab Event
August 19
Tickets: $18, or included with the ACTPass
The Love Markets are back! Clad in military lingerie, the Love Markets are decadent, subversive, stylish and absurd - highbrow enough to tackle Kurt Weill and Hans Eisler, lowbrow enough to pelt the crowd with Slim Jims during a risqué duet about wiener schnitzel. The world of Weimar Berlin wouldn't have batted an eye!

Icicle Creek Theatre Festival
A Central Heating Lab Event
August 23 - 24
Tickets: $12, or included with the ACTPass
The fifth annual Icicle Creek Theatre Festival tours from Leavenworth to Seattle bringing along staged readings of two new plays and a discussion with the playwrights. In You for Me for You, Mia Chung explores the lives of two sisters from North Korea who escape one harsh and unforgiving reality only to enter another very foreign world; a world where a smuggler and a paper balloon can shape a woman's fate. Sheila Daniels, renowned Seattle director and former Associate Director of the Intiman Theatre, will direct. The Whale is a poetic, disturbing and strangely beautiful journey through the life of a small-town shut-in named Charlie, whose self-imposed exile is the result of a brutal and disturbing form of internalized homophobia. Andrew K. Russell, former Associate Producer of the Intiman, will direct.

Cherry Manhattan Presents: The Beebo Brinker Pulp Cabaret
A Central Heating Lab Event
August 25 - August 27
Tickets: $20, or included with the ACTPass
Be there as we introduce Beebo Brinker: one of the most iconic characters of all lesbian pulp fiction by "The Queen of Lesbian Pulp Fiction," Ann Bannon. This seriously sexy cabaret will immerse audiences in an erotic 1950's Greenwich Village underground gay-bar rife with pin-ups, intelligent burlesque, live music and an interactive cast. With a retro fashion show, live band, classic film clips from the fifties, and a titillating medley of song, burlesque, theatre and music, this cabaret offers devilishly dirty entertainment for gay and straight audiences alike ... and everything in between! Featuring Diva le Deviant, Cherry Manhattan, Lyla la Coeur, Polly Wood, Rhonda J. Soikowski, and the hot pink burlesque sensation, Fuchsia Foxx!

Launched in 2008, The Central Heating Lab at ACT serves as an incubator and catalyst for new works. ACT cultivates, produces, and presents artists working in all performance genres and provides an artistic home for a variety of local performance groups and artists. Relationships develop daily with individual actors, performers and playwrights while established partnerships with groups such as the Contemporary Classics, 14/48, RAWSTOCK, Seattle Dance Project, and Icicle Creek Theatre Festival deepen. New programs are added throughout the year.

With year-round programming produced by The Central Heating Lab at ACT alongside ACT's Mainstage plays, ACT offers its patrons a unique opportunity to maximize their theatre experience - the ACTPass: all you can see for only $25 per month ($20 for age 30 and under)! ACTPass holders can attend any ACT produced performance throughout any given month, provided tickets are available. It is the new, more flexible, more affordable way to see more performances for one low price, and is the first of its kind in the region. ACTPass members may cancel at any time, and there is no limit to the number of times a card holder can attend. For the month of August, that means an ACTPass holder can see all our shows, if they so choose, for only $25 vs. paying the single ticket price of at least $144.50 (if buyer would choose to see all offerings).

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