Westport Community Theatre Announces Annapurna

Westport Community Theatre is currently producing Annapurna by Sharr White. Performances take place from February 9th through the 25th on Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 p.m. and at 2:00 p.m. on Sundays, with a Thursday performance on February 15th at 8:00 p.m. Ann Kinner has been cast as Emma in the production and Alexander Kulcsar has embraced both the role of director and lead actor in Annapurna, which is produced by Sam Mink.

The play takes place after main characters Emma and Ulysses have spent twenty years apart. Emma tracks Ulysses to a trailer park in the middle of nowhere for a final reckoning. What unfolds is a visceral and profound meditation on love and loss with the simplest of theatrical elements: two people in one room. It is a breathtaking story about the longevity of love.

The San Francisco Chronicle had this to say about it, "Sharr White's Annapurna is a comic and gripping duet…The closer [the characters] get to understanding what drove them apart, the more engrossed we become in watching them draw together." The Huffington Post commented, "…at the heart of each character is a lyricism that simply can't be suffocated. Sharr White has created two fine and ferociously damaged people caught in the emotional whirlpool of not being able to live with or without each other." And from BroadwayWorld.com, "White's poetry is endearing and quite lovely, and his dialogue is sharp, funny and consistently very honest…”

Actor, director and set designer Alexander Kulcsar played Henry Ford in last season's Camping With Henry and Tom and directed the recent production of Private Lives. Previous roles at WCT include Sharkey in The Seafarer, Picasso in A Picasso (which he also directed), Niels Bohr in Copenhagen and The Man in A Turn of the Screw. Last summer he was Mr. Fingle in the Connecticut premiere of Conor McPherson's The Veil at The Little Theatre in Newtown. For his role in Chappati at Square One Theatre in Stratford last year, he received the Subscribers’ Award for Outstanding Actor. In 2015 he received an award from Square One for Outstanding Contribution to the Theatre. With David Chacko he co-authored a nonfiction book, Beggarman, Spy, and three novels, Gone Over, The Brimstone Papers and Traitors Gate, which won a Chanticleer award for historical fiction in 2013.

Ann Kinner (Emma) has appeared in over a dozen productions at Westport Community theatre including Private Lives, Mr. Pim Passes By, A Picasso, Angel Street, Ice Glen, The Turn of the Screw, The Best Man, Separate Tables, Sherlock’s Last Case, Vanities, Everything in the Garden and several Agatha Christie mysteries. She has received two Square One Subscriber’s awards, including Outstanding Actress. In addition to stage work in New Canaan, Milford, Wilton, Darien and Woodbury, her television credits include The Sopranos; Damages; Sex and the City; the upcoming HBO series The Leftovers; and a six-year recurring role as the Roadside Bar waitress, on All My Children. Film credits include the lead role in the independent film Doing Agatha and small roles in feature films including Camp Hell, All Good Things and Revolutionary Road.

Annapurna is produced by arrangement with Dramatists Play Service. Tickets are $25 ($23 for seniors and students) and can be purchased at westportcommunitytheatre.com or by calling (203) 226-1983. The Westport Community Theatre is located at the Westport Town Hall, 110 Myrtle Avenue.