ACT will embark on cultural adventures
Whatever else she has in mind, Carey Perloff is planning some extensive travels for American Conservatory Theater audiences next season. The four shows the ACT artistic director announced Thursday, Feb. 11, for the 2016- 17 season — involving names as exciting as Peter Brook, Annie Baker and Khaled Hosseini — will transport viewers from Buckingham Palace, a few years in the future, to contemporary Kabul, a possibly haunted American Civil War site and a battlefield in India 2,500 years ago.
The remaining three plays that will complete the seven- show season will be announced at a later date, as will their running order and dates. But the initial announcement holds great promise for the full lineup.
Brook, a genuine theater legend for the past half- century, will return to ACT — where his scintillating “The Suit” was a huge hit two years ago — with “Battlefield,” a new take on one of his most famed projects, his mesmerizing nine- hour staging of playwright Jean- Claude Carrière’s adaptation of “The Mahabharata” in the 1980s. A concentrated four- actor, one- hour dramatization of one section of the ancient Sanskrit epic, adapted and directed by Brook and his primary collaborator Marie- Hélène Estienne, “Battlefield” opened earlier this month at London’s Old Vic to rave reviews.
Hosseini’s best- selling novel “A Thousand Splendid Suns” will receive its world premiere in dramatic form, as adapted by Ursula Rani Sarma with original music by David Coulter. Perloff directs the tale of the resilience of three generations of Afghan women in wartorn Kabul. Mike Bartlett’s recent Olivier Award- winning hit “King Charles III” — like the first two plays, to be staged at the Geary Theater — is a Shakespearean- style history play ( in blank verse) that looks at what happens after Prince Charles finally succeeds his mother on the British throne, and how he deals with his daughterinlaw, the ruthless Princess Kate.
Pulitzer Prize- winner Baker (“The Flick”) makes her ACT debut at the more intimate Strand with the muchpraised “John,” an atypically ghostly story set in a creaking, unsettling old bed- and- breakfast in Gettysburg for a Millennial couple on a tour of historic Civil War battlegrounds. Baker first thrilled Bay Area audiences with three plays in 2012: “Body Awareness” at the Aurora, SF Playhouse’s “The Aliens” and “Circle Mirror Transformation” at Marin Theatre Company.
Season subscription information is available at www. act- sf. org.