THE DUMB WAITER, CELEBRATION et al. Set for ACT's Pinter Festival, 7/20-8/26

ACT - A Contemporary Theatre announces a full-scale theatrical celebration of the works of modern master and Nobel Prize Laureate Harold Pinter. Famous for his biting humor and a favorite of professionals, scholars, and people who like their humor on the darker side, ACT looks to introduce the city of Seattle to many of Pinter's lesser known and rarely produced works in its Pinter Festival, running July 20 - August 26, 2012.

After cultivating a following for Pinter's works through the renowned Pinter Fortnightly series, The Pinter Festival will take over ACT for more than a month, with plays, master classes, readings, films, discussions, and other celebrations of the influential and outspoken British writer.

Performances begin in July when eleven actors perform a double-bill of The Dumb Waiter and Celebration, then add Old Times and No Man's Land to the schedule in August. John Langs, director of the award winning local productions of The Adding Machine and Hamlet (with Darragh Kennan), directs the Celebration and The Dumb Waiter double-bill. Distinguished British director Penny Cherns will direct No Man's Land and Victor Pappas directs Old Times. Nationally acclaimed actors Frank Corrado and Peter Crook appear in multiple productions alongside such Seattle favorites as Anne Allgood, Julie Briskman, Darragh Kennan, Charles Leggett, and more.

Additional programming includes a showcase of Harold Pinter's short and rarely performed sketches to be directed by Jane Kaplan, a series of free films focusing on Pinter, master classes taught by Henry Woolf, and a cabaret performance also featuring Henry Woolf to round out the festivities.

The Pinter Festival is the result of a multi-year series at ACT, curated and hosted by actor Frank Corrado, titled Pinter Fortnightly, which was presented through the Central Heating Lab. Originally conceived as an experiment to explore works of Harold Pinter with an intimate audience, the trial effort grew into a popular 26-event series over three years, with sold-out crowds, and a mass of official 'Pinterian' enthusiasts in Seattle.

Pinter's last play, from 2002, is a one-act that was "inspired" by an experience at the posh Ivy restaurant in London, in which the playwright and his wife Antonia Fraser found themselves distracted by a group of unusually boisterous diners at the next table. Celebration is Pinter's riotously funny and profane revenge. This raucous feast receives its Seattle premiere.

CAST AND CREATIVE:

Director: John Langs
Prue - Anne Allgood
Julie- Julie Briskman
Sonia - Cheyenne Casebier
Lambert - Frank Corrado
Richard - Peter Crook
Russell - Jeffrey Fracé
The Waiter - Darragh Kennan
Matt - RAndy Moore
Suki - Mariel Neto
Additional Waitstaff - Benjamin Harris and Charles Leggett

THE DUMB WAITER

An early one-act from the master of comic menace, The Dumb Waiter provides an hour's worth of tense banter, surprise intrusions by unseen forces, food orders that defy description, dark secrets, and hilarious exchanges that recall Abbott and Costello as prompted by Samuel Beckett.

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