THE ACTING COMPANY
celebrating 35 years of touring and teaching

The Acting Company promotes theater and literacy by bringing a touring repertory of classical productions, talented young actors and teaching artists into communities across America, particularly those where live performance and theater arts education is limited or non-existent. Performing each year in over 50 cities to audiences of 70,000 and reaching more than 25,000 students with its arts education programs, The Acting Company:

Richard Howard and Richard S. Iglewski in Waiting for Godot, directed by Alan Schneider, 1980-82.  Photo by Martha Swope.

Founded in 1972 by John Houseman and current Producing Director Margot Harley with members of the first graduating class of Juilliard’s Drama Division, The Acting Company has performed 131 productions for over 2 million people in 48 states and nine foreign countries. The Company has given a generation of actors the opportunity to master their craft. Alumni members include Kevin Kline, Patti LuPone, David Schramm, Jesse L. Martin, Keith David, Lorraine Toussaint, David Ogden Stiers, Mary Lou Rosato, Lisa Banes, Derek Smith, Frances Conroy, Dennis Boutsikaris, Jeffrey Wright and Rainn Wilson.

This Season, The Guthrie Theater and The Acting Company will co-produce and tour William Shakespeare's Henry V, directed by Davis McCallum. The Acting Company will also present the world premiere of James Fenimore Cooper’s classic espionage novel The Spy, adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher and directed by The Guthrie’s John Miller-Stephany.

Last season, we presented Shakespeare's The Tempest and Moby Dick Rehearsed, Orson Welles’ stage adaptation of the classic novel by Herman Melville.

In 2006-07, we presented Polly Teale's adaptation of Charlotte Bronte's classic, Jane Eyre, and Love, Shakespeare, which examines the trials and tribulations of falling in love through a theatrical exploration of scenes from four of Shakespeare’s most famous plays: Romeo and Juliet, As You Like It, The Taming of The Shrew and Much Ado About Nothing.

Our 2005-06 Season included The Three Musketeers and Macbeth, our twenty-eighth production of Shakespeare’s work. Our 2004-05 Season included an adaptation of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw by Jeffrey Hatcher and Shakespeare’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona. The Acting Company also toured the south with Carson McCullers' The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, adapted by Rebecca Gilman in a production that will be presented in NYC in the fall of 2007.

While on tour, we present master classes, student matinees and performance-based workshops of Shakespeare for younger audiences. This year’s Student Performance Series includes The Tempest. Our Literacy Through Theater program, a weeklong residency, is the centerpiece of our education program — a teaching artist provides a context in which students are immersed in the multidisciplinary nature of the theater from poetry and design, literature and writing, to music and character.

The Acting Company has been honored with the Obie Award, the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award, Citibank’s Excellence in Education Award, two Audelco Awards and a TONY® Honor for Excellence in Theater.