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For the June 2023 edition of Studio Nights, the ATC proudly presented a FEATS double bill, featuring two one-act plays that the ATC has taken to the Festival of European Anglophone Theatrical Societies, or FEATS.
Accelerated Intimacy, by Chiara Venturini, won the 2018 FEATS award for best original script. It was directed by Carrie Ellwanger, who also brought the play to FEATS that year. It tells the story of two complete strangers who are stuck in a disabled New York City subway car. To pass the time and relieve the awkwardness, they decide to take a quiz they find in a discarded newspaper: a series of questions designed to “accelerate intimacy” between strangers. It's a premise both find mildly amusing - okay, maybe a little intriguing - as good a remedy for boredom as anything else, right? Certainly nothing more than that...
Baby Boom, by emerging American playwright Lia Romeo, directed by Jeremy Zeegers, was the ATC's 2023 entry at the Festival of European Anglophone Theatrical Societies (FEATS), which took place in Bad Homburg, Germany 26-29 May. The play met with much critical acclaim from fellow festival participants, and Shannon Doherty was nominated for Best Actress for her role as Sally Martin. The play is a delightfully quirky, darkly comic, and ultimately tragic exploration of the normalization of guns in American culture. It peeks beneath the facade of suburban utopia and into the lives of two young American families. Through a series of twists and turns, the story features heartbreak, a yearning for family, a flickering love, the desire to be understood, the need for community, and an innocent gun.
