2021/22 Season
Transplanted from their beloved Moscow to a provincial Russian town, three sisters yearn for the city of their childhood – where they imagine their lives will be transformed and fulfilled.
A poignant and comic look into the lives of the residents of the decaying Hotel Baltimore as they face eviction from the condemned building.
Living in rural poverty, Mae attempts to better herself by learning how to read. However, her pursuit of self-improvement is squandered by the demands of everyday life and the men that depend on her.
2016/17 Season
2015 Season
2014 Season
2013 Season
2012 Season
2011 Season
Iago, the villain everyone loves to hate , fans the flames of Othello the Moor’s jealousy, and brings about the downfall of those unlucky enough to know him in Shakespeare’s towering tragedy of love, betrayal, and racism.
Two tubercular patients, but only one cure. A doctor must decide what is truly important in life, and wether medicine should be a profit-driven business. Written in 1906, Shaw’s prescient comedy speaks to the health care issues of our day.
Virgina Woolf: “All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the grave of Aphra Behn, for it was she that earned them the right to speak their minds.” A restoration comedy about the ridiculous side of love and marriage
“If music be the food of life, play on.” In the most beloved of Shakespeare’s comedies, mythical lllyria is rife with mistaken identities, cross-dressing and a whole lot of romance.
The A2 ensemble romps through Ancient Greece in this bawdy tale of man vs. woman. Can a plunging neckline lay a sailor low?
A morning of haze, and evening of fog: it only takes one day for a family to unravel. O’Neil’s semi-autobiographical examination of the miasma of dysfunction and love.
Shakespeare’s quixotic “lost play” is unearthed! Originally published in the early 18th century, this could be the missing piece that sheds light on the truth of authorship.
The scathingly funny Pulitzer Prize-winning drama about the unexpected malaise and fear of the upper middle class.
“Double, double toil and trouble.” In this macabre tale of Scottish legends, witches, and hallucinations, Shakespeare’s most bloodied couple thrash against the rise of their own conscience.
Raise a glass to William’s 100th Birthday year with a gala celebration. Spend the afternoon with artists who knew and worked with him, come back for an evening of jazz, some excerpts from his greatest hits – and a birthday cake!
The girl queen and the crafty politician. Along the Nile, Shaw at his artful best sets up a wily, passionate game of cat and mouse between two formidable titans.
Set on the eve of World War II, the aging hedonist of the Great War stave off the approaching storm with sex and alcohol – and whatever else they can get their hands on – to the chagrin of the prim younger generation.
Kenneth Cavander’s mash up of the Oedipus cycle, drawn from Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. The 5 hour, 2 part event is an immersion into the lust, greed and ambition that still plagues modern man.
Fires, storms, attempted suicides, dancing, and boredom–a collision of comedy and tragedy. A presentation of the third acts of Uncle Vanya, The Three Sisters, The Cherry Orchard, and The Seagull.
“Hello” to that irrepressible Dolly Levi. A 20th century merry chase of mismatched lovers, secret rendezvous, and great big personalities. Wilder’s homespun comedy, both funny and touching.
Find out who’s really crazy when a pair of lovebirds bring their mismatched families together in Kaufman and Hart’s madcap 1937 Pulitzer Prize winning comedy.
2010 Season
2008 Season
2006 Season
Explorer/Reporter Richard Stanley’s West African supply team–left behind as he goes adventuring in the depths of the interior–are commanded by a terrified bureaucrat with a few very bad habits…
A great roman general finds that the political world can be bloodier than any battlefield, in Shakespeare’s brilliantly vivid recreation of Republican politics in early Rome.
Famed classics adapter Cavander (“The Greeks”) has combined tales of Aeschelus, Sophocles, and Euripides to tell the story of Agamemnon and his ever-loving family in one glorious evening.
Three midwestern couples tossed into a whirlwind of gender confusion. The men play women in a local theatre production, and get so deeply into their roles that their wives have to pick up the slack…
A musical adaptation of Moliere’s “George Dandin,” transported to a border town in Texas, where the pursuit of love and the pangs of heartbreak are set to honky-tonk, mariachi, and other styles of the American South.
The helplessness of purity when faced with the all-devouring hunger of lust–Seneca’s retelling of the ancient myth of Hippolytus and and Phaedra.
Pinter’s ingenious mix of the comical and the disturbing looks at the ultimate emptiness that can accompany old age, and asks what is to be done when there is nothing left to do.
A tragedy of a man and a woman struggling for the possession of their child, and the child must pay the penalty. Strindberg’s unforgiving look at the pitiless battle between the sexes.
Dakin Matthews has crafted a new rhyming verse translation of this wild Roman comedy–the original mistaken identity play and Shakespeare’s source for “The Comedy of Errors”
Bored wives, ardent suitors, oblivious husbands–Turgenev’s masterful recreation of Russian rural society and the ties that bind a family together.
Beckett’s final work confronts his own impending death–a solo work performed by famed Beckett collaborator Alan Mandell in an unforgettable evening. Also, a few Beckett odds and ends and a special screening.
An original work–In the moments before his death Playwright Chekhov and Doctor Chekhov grapple with the curiosities of life, love, medicine, and the theatre.
Two young lovers tempted by the lure of wealth, sex, power, and drink. Not that there’s anything wrong with that! An effervescently original comedy inspired by Marivaux’s “A Double Inconstancy.”
Our Academy Company, some of the finest young classical actors in LA, in great moments of Sophocles’ “Iphigenia” and from Shakespeare’s plays, including “Measure for Measure” and “The Merchant of Venice.”
Mingling with friends at a military wedding, a Canadian soldier finds himself haunted by the ghosts of murdered Rwandan children and their performance of Shakespeare’s “Titus Andronicus.”
Democracy has come to Mother Russia–but one factory manager longs for the good old days and turns his retirement into a last-ditch firefight with the new bosses of capitalism.
Napoleon’s army looms across the channel as the eccentric Bellboys family prepares for an invasion. The delightful comedy explores the foolishness and inevitability of warfare–and of love.
2004 Season
First public exhibition of a project on which the Antaeus Company and Academy Company have been collaborating the past year. Charles Dickens uncovers a dark conspiracy of arson and murder in the chaotic world that was London in the 1830s. A sprawling epic with 35 actors portraying more than 130 characters.
Writer/film director Lynn’s new play tells the story of French titans Charles de Gaulle and Marshall Petain, and their professional and personal relationship.A fascinating drama of friendship and rivalry between the two giants of the 20th century France, set for it’s world premiere in London this fall.
Poems in My Pocket enjoyed a highly successful 3 years run in Los Angeles under the title Rants, Rhymes, and Lies at the Irish Arts Center, beginning in 1996. The show is completely improvisatory and changes every night. Different actors appear in each shoe, and each actor has memorized perhaps 15 to 20 poems (sometimes more!) and, within a thematic progression, they gather onstage to “converse” with each other in poetic language. The order of the poems is never set in advance, so no two shoes are ever the same—actors both rotate and bring in new poems all the time. The actors choose the poems themselves so our poetry cabaret becomes a glorious way for the actor to define and express himself or herself in verse.
Bartleby, the Scrivener is one of several explorations we have made into musical theatre short forms, and in particular the connection to the short story form. In Herman Melville’s tale we found an intriguing ambiguity and a surprising amount of humor, and have been please as our audiences respond to those same qualities. Those who haven’t thought of Bartleby since their school days may be surprised at how lively the story is and how modern it remains
“My eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. He is peeling down the alley in a black and yellow Ford” — Folk Tune
This workshop production of “Twelfth Night” grew out of a reading of the play which Antaeus Academy Company did for the Met Theatre’s Shakespeare Marathon in October of 2003. And we didn’t choose the play, the play chose us. One of our members pulled the title from a hat, and we became responsible for the reading this last and most lyrical of Shakespeare’s high comedies. As we looked for a way into the play, we discovered that “Twelfth Night” draws a great Shakespeare’s high comedies. As we looked for a way into the play, we discovered that “Twelfth Night” draws a great deal of emotional and intellectual power from the conflict between love and time .
“What is love? ’Tis not hereafter; Present mirth hath present laughter;
What’s to come is still unsure. In delay there lies no plenty,
Then come kiss me sweet and twenty; Youth’s a stuff will not endure”
By the end of the play, some of the characters have found love in time, and other’s haven’t. And it’s the imperfections of this world that make “Twelfth Night” resonate so deeply. Like ours, it’s hilarious, poignant, sometimes savage world, and there are many people—Antonios and Malvolios—who lose. But with patience, time, and a little bit of luck, a few also manage to win.
