Act3 Productions Announces 2022-23 Season and New Artistic Director

Act3 Productions in Sandy Springs today announced its Tenth Anniversary season. The season, which revolves around family themes, opens September 23, with Neil Simon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Lost In Yonkers. The schedule also includes a Holiday comedy favorite play; a classic novel transformed into a musical, and a Pulitzer Prize-winning tragicomedy. Act3productions.org

The Act3 2022-23 Season Calendar is:

• September 23-October 9: Lost in Yonkers
• December 2-18: A Christmas Story
• February 10-26, 2023: Little Women
• April 14-30: August: Osage County

Act3 also is announcing a new Artistic Director – Zach Stutts. Stutts is an award-winning actor, designer and director with over a hundred production credits since entering the theatre field full-time in 2011. Most recently, he spent the last six years performing and producing theatre throughout the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas-he served as the Operations Director and Production Designer at Camille Playhouse (Brownsville, TX) as well as Co-Founder and Managing Director of the newly formed Brownsville Repertory Theatre.

Before moving to Texas in 2016, Stutts was heavily involved in the metropolitan Atlanta theatre community. He worked with the musical theatre team at Starr's Mill High School (Fayetteville), where he worked on the Shuler Hensley award-winning productions of The Addams Family, Urinetown and Zombie Prom.

“With a milestone tenth season in the making, I wanted to remind our community of patrons and supporters that theatre is for everyone -- for every family,” said Stutts. “With this first season coming out of the pandemic, I wanted to explore and share stories that focus on various family dynamics -- stories that allow us, as patrons, to be both entertained and inspired, but also with which we can relate. I also wanted shows with a variety of wonderful characters that any actor would love to take on. I am very excited for what is ahead at Act3 this season!”

Season ticket packages range from $65 to $82 and are available at act3productions.org. Tickets for groups of 10 or more are available by calling the box office at 770-241-1905. Single tickets range from $21 to $34 for musicals and $18 to $27 for plays and are available via the website.

September 23-October 9: Lost in Yonkers

By America's great comic playwright (Neil Simon), Lost in Yonkers is a memory play set in Yonkers in 1942. Bella is thirty-five years old, mentally challenged, and living at home with her mother, stern Grandma Kurnitz. As the play opens, ne'er-do-well son Eddie deposits his two young sons on the old lady's doorstep. He is financially strapped and taking to the road as a salesman. The boys are left to contend with Grandma, with Bella and her secret romance, and with Louie, her brother, a small-time hoodlum in a strange new world called Yonkers.

December 2-18: A Christmas Story

Humorist Jean Shepherd's memoir of growing up in the Midwest in the 1940s follows 9-year-old Ralphie Parker in his quest to get a genuine Red Ryder BB gun under the tree for Christmas. Ralphie pleads his case before his mother, his teacher and even Santa Claus himself at Higbee's Department Store. The consistent response: "You'll shoot your eye out!" All the elements from the beloved motion picture are in the play, including the family's temperamental exploding furnace; Scut Farkas, the school bully; the boys' experiment with a wet tongue on a cold lamppost; the Little Orphan Annie decoder pin; Ralphie's father winning a lamp shaped like a woman's leg in a net stocking; Ralphie's fantasy scenarios, and more.

February 10-26, 2023: Little Women

Based on Louisa May Alcott's life, the musical Little Women follows the adventures of sisters Jo, Meg, Beth and Amy March. Jo is trying to sell her stories for publication, but the publishers are not interested – her friend, Professor Bhaer, tells her that she has to do better and write more from herself. Begrudgingly taking this advice, Jo weaves the story of herself and her sisters and their experience growing up in Civil War America.

April 14-30: August: Osage County

A vanished father. A pill-popping mother. Three sisters harboring shady little secrets. When the large Weston family unexpectedly reunites after Dad disappears, their Oklahoman family homestead explodes in a maelstrom of repressed truths and unsettling secrets. Mix in Violet, the drugged-up, scathingly acidic matriarch, and you’ve got a major play that unflinchingly—and uproariously—exposes the dark side of the Midwestern American family.

The intimate, 100-seat Act3 Playhouse is located in the heart of Sandy Springs in Sandy Springs Plaza, 6285 Roswell Road (enter through the breezeway next to Five Guys). Ample free parking is available and the area offers patrons many fine restaurants for pre- or post-theater dining. More details and tickets can be found at Act3productions.org