AACTFest 2021: National Companies
Performances were live-streamed by Broadway on Demand as part of the festival, but tickets for individual productions were also available separately for non-registrants. Broadway On Demand provided technical support for each perfomance.
Festival Awards, Sunday, June 20. The evening’s line-up included a keynote from Philip Hernandez, celebrity guest appearances, and the announcement of all Festival winners.
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INNOVAtheatre, Cincinnati, Ohio Ordinary Days is about four people who are struggling to find their purpose and connection in their lives. Little do they know that with a mere shift in perspective, these struggles are what makes them part of such a bigger picture-which reminds us how we are all connected even if it is just through a place. |
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Stage Left Theater Association, Spokane, Washington Jody confronts his best friend Carl, who has been bringing seemingly random chairs into Jody's map store. Jody hasn't left his shop in some time, paralyzed with fear of a growing worldwide epidemic looming large. Carl urges Jody to leave the store and to engage in his life. |
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Theatre Tuscaloosa, Tuscaloosa, Alabama In 1950s Alabama, a White bride-to-be upsets the apple cart when she plans to invite her beloved Black housekeeper to her wedding. Inspired by the playwright’s family history, this funny, poignant story explores the complex and often dysfunctional family dynamics created by the barriers of racism. |
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Artists Collaborative Theatre, Elkhorn City, Kentucky In the late 1800s, the quiet Tug River Valley on the border of West Virginia and Kentucky was rocked by violence, conspiracy, and star-crossed romance. Go back in time and experience the famous Hatfield & McCoy feud firsthand, as told by the characters who lived it. |
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SHAPE Players, Mons, Belgium Holy Days concerns a Kansas family in the 1930s trying to in Holy Days survive what is now known as the 'Black Blizzards'. This story of two farmer brothers and their wives struggling to make it through the drought and winds that hit the southern Great Plains, blowing away as much withered hope as dried-out topsoil. Living in close proximity, they engage with each other with a humanity that we almost can't bear to watch, yet can certainly all admire. Holy Days is a story of perseverance, a poem with community, sacrifice, endurance, and hope at its core. |
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Players de Noc, Escanaba, Michigan Jerry and Jamie have spent months attempting to select the best play for a theatre competition, only to be thwarted by licensing permissions. An original script seems to be the only answer. Jerry struggles with his own brain, his ego, his id, and a global pandemic to create an original script to present at AACTFest, the national theatre festival. Can it be created in time for the competition? |
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Windham Actors Guild, Windham, New Hampshire How to be a Good Son explores the difficult terrain of familial love, and the near impossibility of saying what we feel to the ones we love-even, or especially, when we know that time is running out. |
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The Studio Theatre, Little Rock , Arkansas In an alternate universe not unlike our own, there is a planet called Earth. And on Earth there is a woman named Hillary, who wants to be President of a country called the United States. When she isn't doing so well in the polls, she summons the help of her husband, Bill, and gets more than she ever bargained for. Decide for yourself where fact meets fiction. |
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Shawnee Little Theatre, Shawnee Oklahoma In the final scene of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, Nora Helmer decides to leave her husband and children, and begin a new life. In A Doll’s House, Part 2, many years have passed, and now there’s a knock on that same door. Nora has returned. Why? What will it mean for those she left behind |
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South City Theatre, Pelham Alabama The conflict between an established artist and an adulatory fan who becomes a protégé, then colleague, then friend, then finally threatening rival, resurfaces in Collected Stories. The play looks at how time, truth, and art change people and their interactions—not just with each other, but also with themselves. |
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Bellingham Theatre Guild, Bellingham, Washington On the surface, The Harry and Sam Dialogues appears to be philosophical discussions between two blue-collar types who are way out of their league, but their discussions are surprisingly lively. They use what they can from their own lives, like milk and Ding-Dongs, to make sense of what everything means. They discuss all the big questions: Is there life after death? How are men and women different? And, of course, if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? |
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The Lexington Players, Lexington, Massachusetts The Mountaintop is a fictional depiction of events the night before the assassination of the civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. After delivering one of his most memorable speeches, "I've Been to the Mountaintop, " Dr. King retires to his motel room, where an encounter with a maid causes him to reflect on his mission and purpose. The play is set in Room 306 of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis on the eve of his assassination in 1968. (Adult Language) |
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