Artists Collective Theatre Announces Second Season

(Nashua, NH)  Artists Collective Theatre (ACT) begins its celebration of their second season of producing theatre at the Hunt Memorial Building in downtown Nashua by launching a new website and offering season tickets for purchase. “Our upcoming season will continue our commitment to offering little seen shows to southern New Hampshire audiences,” founding member Leah Belanger said. “We are focusing on the idea of time and how it changes you or the world around you.  Our second season will consist of three main stage shows and smaller events throughout the year including the parties we’ve become known for.”

ACT will open its season on August 15 with the two person play Gruesome Playground Injuries. Written by Rajiv Joseph, a 2010 Pulitzer prize finalist for his play Bengal Tiger at the Bagdad Zoo, the show focuses on a thirty year relationship between Kayleen and Doug --  two friends who first meet in their school nurse's office when they are just 8 years old. As the years go by, the two meet time and again at hospitals and funerals and the audience puzzles their story together as time jumps back and forth in five year increments. The characters are played by Suzanne Delle and Casey Preston who appeared together in last summer’s production of All New People. 

Clybourne Park, winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 2012 Tony Award for Best Play, opens on February 5, 2015 at the Hunt Building. The show is directed by Tasia A. Jones who is spending this summer at the Lincoln Center directors’ lab in New York City, and features actors Leah Belanger who ACT audiences will remember from her performance in Becky Shaw and Chris Leon who ACT audiences last saw in the one night event It Could Be Worse. Clybourne Park was written by Bruce Norris as a companion piece to Lorraine Hansberry's classic play A Raisin in the Sun and the first act takes place in 1959 as the black family from Hansberry’s play plans to move into a white Chicago neighborhood. In act two the audience revisits the same house in 2009 as gentrification takes over and a group of concerned citizens discusses the future of the neighborhood. One cast of actors plays the characters from both time periods in this play that The Washington Post deemed “one of its feistiest, funniest evenings in years.”

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The third main stage play of the season is Richard Greenberg’s play about how adult children view their parents’ lives. Three Days of Rain will open in April 2015 and is directed by ACT Company member Josiah George (the director of last season’s Becky Shaw). Act one takes place when the adult children of a famous architect gather for the reading of his will and find his diary with the cryptic entry “three days of rain” written in it.  Act two goes back to that fateful weekend in 1960 when the falling rain changed the fate of the young architect. The play was nominated for the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

More information about each of the plays chosen for ACT’s second season can be found at their newly updated website http://act-theatre.org/ or on their Facebook page.  A season pass is available for $50 which is a significant discount from buying single tickets to each individual show. Passes are only available through July 31 at https://www.artful.ly/store/events/3523.   ACT is a group of professional theatre artists who are committed to producing provocative theatre that speaks to their local community. Recently the women in the organization were recognized by the Nashua Telegraph as part of the “25 Remarkable Women of Nashua” celebration. The group is also known for their opening night parties and one night events both of which will continue throughout the upcoming season.