Winning Plays, Workshops, and a World Premiere for Fall

Here's what's coming up at Actors' Theatre!

8 Tens @ 8

The yearly work on the 8 Tens @ 8 Short Play Festival for 2025 continues. Next up? Our 16 directors meet at the end of August to select the plays they will direct from the 24 finalists selected by our Reading Committee. It's always a lively discussion as directors put forth their favorites and the negotiations begin. Good will and compromise usually rule the day though, and everyone comes away excited for the casting and rehearsal process.

The 8 plays that aren't chosen by a director become part of the Best of the Rest staged readings presented in March. This year, we're thinking of Best of the Rest as "part 3" of the festival, and will offer a special discount on tickets to folks who want to see all 24 of these winning short plays. The 16 plays that will be in the Festival and the 8 Best of the Rest will be announced in early September. Scripts will be made available at the downtown Santa Cruz library for actors to check out before auditions, which will be held on September 29 and 30.

Great workshops coming this fall

We want to keep the "Actors" in our name alive by becoming a resource and haven for actors and other theater folk. Part of that mission is continuing to offer workshops to help you build your craft or try something new. Whether you're a seasoned player or want to explore theater for the first time, we're here to encourage and welcome you.

Last year's popular weekend intensive highlighting both the Meisner and Michael Chekhov techniques returns on September 21 and 22. San Francisco teachers Bruce Avery and Lana Palmer will lead this two-day workshop that offers a crash course in Meisner Technique on one day, and introduces the methods of Michael Chekhov, whom Konstantin Stanislavski declared his most brilliant student, on the other. While they are certainly different, what these two techniques have in common is their focus on helping the actor respond honestly and authentically to each moment on stage. Learn more and sign up at HERE.

Good Enough Improv is sponsoring two improv workshops with Australian improv virtuoso Patti Stiles on October 5. The first 3-hour workshop explores exercises and techniques to help you delight, surprise and inspire your scene partner, and the second will show you that sometimes the best "Yes" you can give in a scene is a "NO"! Patti will show you why and how! Sign up for one or both at the Good Enough Improv site HERE.

BREAKING NEWS: Oct 5 improv workshops are sold out, but two more have been added for Oct 6!

Our final fall workshop is with the inimitable Bill Peters, who will once again help actors and directors master the intricacies of Shakespearian text. Beginning October 21, and continuing for 8 sessions, Bill will guide you in exploring the nature of Shakespeare’s theatrical imagination and the linguistic tools he used to create his themes, plots and characters through studying and performing various monologues and scenes from the collected works. No prior Shakespeare experience is required, and people who are Shakespeare-phobic are particularly welcome. Learn more and sign up HERE.

World premiere of a new play perfect for October

We're also excited to annouce that we'll be continuing both our long-standing commitment to new works our year-ago-new tradition of staging a show for the spooky season in October with the world premiere of Lucky Time, a new play by local playwright and author John Chandler, directed by Wilma Marcus Chandler. In Lucky Time, a vehicle breakdown near a remote cabin leads to a night of wine, dangerous confessions, and visitations from past misdeeds. Is it luck when a stranger offers help...or something far worse? Gather your courage and a friend's hand to squeeze, and come to the theater this October to find out!

Lucky Time will open October 17 and play though October 27, with performances on Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings and Sunday matinees.

Get tickets HERE.