After close consultation with Arlington County Cultural Affairs, Avant Bard Theatre will be cancelling the 2020 Spring Repertory effective immediately. This includes all future performances of both Ada and the Engine and Suddenly Last Summer.
Avant Bard is dedicated to presenting intimate, accessible theatre, but we must prioritize the health and well-being of our audiences, performers, and staff.
If you’ve purchased tickets, you will receive an email from us about next steps. Due to the high volume of patrons impacted, we ask for your patience with us at this time while we process these communications.
Finally, we’d like to acknowledge the many artists whose professional lives are deeply impacted by this cancellation and affirm our commitment to pay them. If you’d like to support us in keeping that commitment, you can make a contribution to Avant Bard here.
SEASON 30 SPRING REPERTORY
NOW PLAYING AT GUNSTON ARTS CENTER THEATRE TWO
(Get tickets here!)
February 27-April 5, 2020
Gunston Arts Center Theater Two
SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER by Tennessee Williams
Directed by Christopher Henley
Set in the hothouse of New Orlean’s Garden District, Suddenly Last Summer has all the hallmarks of a Tennessee Williams masterpiece: exotic locales, tortured psyches, glorious, lyrical language, and Williams’ gift for creating vivid, unforgettable characters. An elderly socialite mourns the death of her poet son, who died under mysterious circumstances while vacationing at an island resort. Eager to protect her son’s image, she hires a doctor to silence the only witness to the tragic event–but the shattering truth fights its way to the surface, as it always does in Williams’ world. In the great Avant Bard tradition of providing audiences an opportunity to see something they may have read but have never seen–or have seen the movie version but have never seen it on-stage–audiences can learn first-hand what happened last summer, and experience the unique and exhilarating beauty of this quintessential Williams classic. Directed by Artistic Director Emeritus Christopher Henley, Suddenly Last Summer will be produced along with Ada and the Engine as a part of Avant Bard’s 30th Anniversary Spring Repertory.
ADA AND THE ENGINE by Lauren Gunderson
Directed by Megan Behm
Ada Lovelace, the only legitimate child of the amorous poet Lord Byron, had a love of her own: mathematics. Well, that…plus a certain polymath-inventor, Charles Babbage, famous as “the father of the computer.” It’s true that Babbage invented the hardware–the Analytic Engine–but the language, the song, the soul of the thing, the programming: that was all Ada. From prolific playwright Lauren Gunderson (author of the inspirational Emilie, which Avant Bard produced to great acclaim in 2017), Ada and the Engine is a whimsical scientific history that once again proves the future is, and has always been, female. Megan Behm, who staged last season’s uproarious hit A Misanthrope, will return to Avant Bard to direct Ada and The Engine as part of Avant Bard’s Spring Repertory, alongside Suddenly Last Summer.
JULIUS CAESAR by William Shakespeare
May 21 – June 21, 2020
Gunston Arts Center Theatre Two
The story is all too familiar: Julius Caesar reunites Rome after a bloody civil war, and returns home to be crowned Emperor. His assassination is meant to restore Rome to former glory, but democracy cannot be rebuilt so easily. A classic, passionate story about what we’ll sacrifice for a chance at a better world. For our 30th Anniversary Season, director Kathleen Akerley, a longtime Avant Bard favorite and Artistic Director of Longacre Lea, returns to present Shakespeare’s tragedy in a multimedia production that promises to be both epic in scope and rawly visceral in impact.
