MAGGIE MAY by Frances Poet, directed by Chris Foster

Performance Dates: Sept 6, 7, 8, 13, 14, 15, 20, 21, 22, 2024. Fri & Sat 7:30, Sun 3:00.

Pay-What-You-Will preview: Thursday Sept 5, 2024. 7:30. 

A talkback with the director and cast to follow the Sunday, September 15th performance

The United States premiere of “Maggie May” by Frances Poet is an extraordinary drama about an ordinary family who must balance the challenges of daily life whilst living with dementia. Maggie and Gordon met 6o years ago dancing and singing to Rod Stewart songs and now the songs are sometimes all she can remember. Albany Civic Theater is proud to team up with Harbinger Theatre to co-produce this glorious play.

ON GOLDEN POND by Ernest Thompson, directed by Barbara Davis

Performance Dates: Dec 6, 7, 8, 13, 14, 15, 20, 21, 22, 2024. Fri & Sat 7:30, Sun 3:00

Pay-What-You-Will preview: Thursday December 5, 2024. 7:30.

A talkback with the director and cast to follow the Sunday, December 15th performance

This is the love story of Ethel and Norman Thayer, who are returning to their summer home on Golden Pond for the forty-eighth year. He is a retired professor, nearing eighty, with heart palpitations and a failing memory. Ethel, ten years younger, and the perfect foil for Norman, delights in all the small things that have enriched their long life together. They are visited by their divorced, middle-aged daughter and her dentist fiancé, who then go off to Europe, leaving his teenage son behind for the summer. Norman revels in taking his ward fishing and thrusting good books at him, while learning lessons about modern teenage awareness in return. As the summer wanes, so does their brief idyll, and in the final moments of the play, Norman and Ethel are brought closer together by the incidence of a mild heart attack. Time is now against them, but the years have been good, and perhaps, another summer on Golden Pond still awaits.

THE PILLOWMAN by Martin McDonagh, directed by Ellen Cribbs

Auditions: December 9, 10, 2024 at 7:30.

Performance Dates: Feb 14, 15, 16, 21, 22, 23, 28, March 1, 2, 2025. Fri & Sat 7:30, Sun 3:00

Pay-What-You-Will preview: Thursday Feb 13, 2025. 7:30

A talkback with the director and cast to follow the Sunday, February 23rd performance

With echoes of Stoppard, Kafka, and the Brothers Grimm, THE PILLOWMAN centers on a writer in an unnamed totalitarian state who is being interrogated about the gruesome content of his short stories and their similarities to a series of child murders. The result is an urgent work of theatrical bravura and an unflinching examination of the very nature and purpose of art.

ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD by Tom Stoppard, directed by Ryan Gangemi

Auditions: February 17, 18 2025 at 7:30.

Performance Dates: May 16, 17, 18, 23, 24, 25, 30, 31, June 1, 2025. Fri & Sat 7:30, Sun 3:00

Pay-What-You-Will preview: Thursday May 15, 2025. 7:30.

A talkback with the director and cast to follow the Sunday, May 25th performance

Acclaimed as a modern dramatic masterpiece, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead is the fabulously inventive tale of Hamlet as told from the worm’s-eye view of the bewildered Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two minor characters in Shakespeare’s play. In Tom Stoppard’s best-known work, this Shakespearean Laurel and Hardy finally get a chance to take the lead role, but do so in a world where echoes of Waiting for Godot resound, where reality and illusion intermix, and where fate leads our two heroes to a tragic but inevitable end.