For Jeffrey Albright, the Actors Collaborative Toledo’s (ACT) upcoming production of Lucas Hnath’s provocative play “The Christians” hits close to home— in many ways.
For one thing, the actor and co-founder of ACT will be playing the lead role, a pastor whose crisis of faith rocks his congregation. The play will be staged at Trinity Episcopal Church, where Albright is a member. The show was first brought to Albright’s attention last fall by a dear friend, Susan, who praised Hnath’s critically lauded, nationally well-recieved, mature and nuanced play about faith.
“She liked it so much that she had seen it three times while she was in Columbus, and told me I had to read it. So I read it, then presented it to the play-reading committee of our theater, and they reacted very positively and decided to do it.”
Susan, also a member of Trinity’s congregation, who had battled cancer for years, sadly passed away this past August. “I’m dedicating my performance in her memory,” Albright said.
Thought provoking
Staging a thought-provoking piece like “The Christians” is par for the course for Actors Collaborative Toledo, a non-profit organization which has specialized in bringing unconventional theater to area stages since it was founded in 2013.
“We are a group of theater artists joined together to do more contemporary plays that wouldn’t necessarily be done by other local companies, usually due to content or subject matter,” Albright said. “These are things that the regular community theaters probably couldn’t fill their theaters with. We are what I call a ‘traveling group of actors,’ we perform in different venues. We don’t have a brick-and-mortar building.”
Trinity Church is one many venues that have hosted ACT shows, including the Toledo Museum of Art to the Collingwood Arts Center. Albright said that broadening the group’s connections to area artists is a big part of ACT’s continuing growth over the past few years.
“We have a lot more people who are involved at all levels. We have people who are contacting us with ideas for plays for us to produce, plays they want to direct. We have opened up to the theater community a lot in the past few years.”
Desire to communicate
To that end, a portion of the proceeds from “The Christians” will be going to support the Perrysburg Chorale, which will be performing as the choir during the show. And Albright said he hopes the play’s themes about faith and communication will give it deep resonance with area audiences.
“It’s okay to disagree with people, and to still be in conversation with them, which is something that is being tested right now in our whole country,” he said. “I mean, one of the things the main character says, and I’m paraphrasing, is ‘I have this intense desire to communicate, but the distance between us is insurmountable.’ So it’s trying to communicate with someone when there is great distance in your beliefs, which can apply to religion, to politics, to a romantic relationship.”
“The Christians” will be performed on
Saturday | November 19 at 8pm
at Trinity Episcopal Church on Adams Street | $10
For more information, visit act419.org.
