Inside A.C.T.

posted by Jessica Kitchens, A.C.T. Master of Fine Arts Program class of 2012 For the past four weeks, the A.C.T. M.F.A. Program class of 2012 has been in rehearsals for Euripides’ Ion . The production, directed by Barbara Damashek, opens at Zeum on Thursday, April 28th for its one-weekend run. Ion is a strange animal. Written in the fifth century B.C.E., the play is nominally a tragedy—but it seems to have a happy ending. It also defies our contemporary expectations of these ancient plays by telling a very intimate story. The title role is a young man who doesn’t know who his parents are; the play’s other main character, Kreousa, is a mother who had to abandon her only child. So while preparing to direct the play, Damashek went beyond the usual sources. She found one contemporary book that seemed particularly meaningful: Ann Fessler’s The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade , a collection of test...

posted by Dan Rubin, A.C.T. Publications & Literary Associate Please join me in welcoming the Master of Fine Arts Program class of 2012 . In this third of three posts about what our students did this past summer, we offer you a first glimpse into the lives of the actors who will be spending the next three years with us. Matt Bradley spent a month in Atlanta, Georgia, on his knees in The Last Days of Judas Iscariot and doing his best Adam Sandler in The Wedding Singer (the musical). He watched a lot of theater, read many books, spent a week in Sun Valley, Idaho, and, finally, moved into a little studio apartment on Pine and Hyde. Alex Crowther: “My summer was busy getting ready for the big move to San Francisco. It was a mix of good (the excitement of meeting my new classmates and learning more about what the next three years have in store), bad (the never-ending visa applications, government assistance applications, and health care coverage applications), and sad (saying...