Outside the Box 2025
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The Actors’ Reading Collective presents
our 3rd annual summer reading series
Outside the Box!
The Thin Place
by Lucas Hnath
directed by Emilie Talbot
Everyone who ever died is still here, just in a different part of here. Linda can communicate with them. And if you believe, she can make you hear them, too — in the thin place, the fragile boundary between our world and the other one. Hilda, a keen listener and observer who’s grappling with loss, befriends the veteran medium, seeking answers. Beautiful and deeply creepy all in one.
90 minutes
“The Thin Place is a welcome return of Hnath the creepy fabulist, the haunted magician who revels in the uncanny and liminal.” - David Cote, The Observer, December 12, 2019
Monday, July 7, 2025 | 7pm at Z Below in San Francisco
Sunday, July 13, 2025 | 7pm at the Aurora in Berkeley
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Appropriate
by Branden Jacob Jenkins
directed by Leontyne Mbele-Mbong
Appropriate follows the dysfunctional Lafayette family as they return to a decaying plantation mansion in Arkansas to battle over their recently deceased father's inheritance. Soon after the discovery of a relic buried deep in the recess of their family's past, decades of resentment burst through centuries of historical sin.
2h 30m
“The best playwright in America, [Branden Jacob Jenkins’ “Appropriate”] is approachable and funny but searing in its incisiveness. - Naveen Kumar, The Washington Post, June 4, 2025
Sunday, July 20, 2025 | 7pm at the Aurora in Berkeley
Monday, July 21, 2025 | 7pm at Z Below in San Francisco
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The Best We Could
by Emily Feldman
directed by Timothy Redmond
In this funny, wise, and heartbreaking debut from Emily Feldman, a daughter’s road trip with her father becomes a theatrical journey across more than just state lines. Though
36-year old Ella has nearly given up on life, she agrees to accompany her father Lou on a long-distance trip to adopt a rescue dog. Guided by a narrator called Maps and interspersed with memories and phone calls from Ella’s mother, Peg, their journey reveals hard truths as their pasts slowly rise to the surface.
90 minutes
“Searingly insightful... like a personal GPS that plots the course of a family.” – Naveen Kumar, The New York Times, March 6, 2023
Sunday, July 27, 2025 | 7pm at the Aurora in Berkeley
Monday, July 28, 2025 | 7pm at Z Below in San Francisco
___________________________________________________________
Recipe
by Michael Gene Sullivan
directed by Ansley Valentine
The Morning Glory Baking Circle seems like a harmless enough group of women bakers of retirement age... until they reveal the rest of their title, "for Revolutionary Self-Defense!" They may appear inoffensive, but they are as dedicated to making pies, cakes, muffins, and cobbler as they are to overthrowing the fascist corporatocracy of America... with a "K!"
But when they invite a young Black reporter to their rebel headquarters to divulge their latest plan for socialist revolution, the last thing they expect is that she might be an F.B.I. mole sent to infiltrate and destroy them. Or is she? Are they just paranoid old nuts, or has the government really taken notice of them?
1h 45m
“Part farce, part satire, even part mystery, but make no mistake: The political agenda of this seemingly dotty quartet is no joke. Funny, and alarming." — San Francisco Examiner, October 22, 2014
Monday, August 4, 2025 | 7pm at the Aurora in Berkeley
Tuesday, August 5, 2025 | 7pm at the Magic in San Francisco
Get Tickets
our 3rd annual summer reading series
Outside the Box!
The Thin Place
by Lucas Hnath
directed by Emilie Talbot
Everyone who ever died is still here, just in a different part of here. Linda can communicate with them. And if you believe, she can make you hear them, too — in the thin place, the fragile boundary between our world and the other one. Hilda, a keen listener and observer who’s grappling with loss, befriends the veteran medium, seeking answers. Beautiful and deeply creepy all in one.
90 minutes
“The Thin Place is a welcome return of Hnath the creepy fabulist, the haunted magician who revels in the uncanny and liminal.” - David Cote, The Observer, December 12, 2019
Monday, July 7, 2025 | 7pm at Z Below in San Francisco
Sunday, July 13, 2025 | 7pm at the Aurora in Berkeley
___________________________________________________________
Appropriate
by Branden Jacob Jenkins
directed by Leontyne Mbele-Mbong
Appropriate follows the dysfunctional Lafayette family as they return to a decaying plantation mansion in Arkansas to battle over their recently deceased father's inheritance. Soon after the discovery of a relic buried deep in the recess of their family's past, decades of resentment burst through centuries of historical sin.
2h 30m
“The best playwright in America, [Branden Jacob Jenkins’ “Appropriate”] is approachable and funny but searing in its incisiveness. - Naveen Kumar, The Washington Post, June 4, 2025
Sunday, July 20, 2025 | 7pm at the Aurora in Berkeley
Monday, July 21, 2025 | 7pm at Z Below in San Francisco
___________________________________________________________
The Best We Could
by Emily Feldman
directed by Timothy Redmond
In this funny, wise, and heartbreaking debut from Emily Feldman, a daughter’s road trip with her father becomes a theatrical journey across more than just state lines. Though
36-year old Ella has nearly given up on life, she agrees to accompany her father Lou on a long-distance trip to adopt a rescue dog. Guided by a narrator called Maps and interspersed with memories and phone calls from Ella’s mother, Peg, their journey reveals hard truths as their pasts slowly rise to the surface.
90 minutes
“Searingly insightful... like a personal GPS that plots the course of a family.” – Naveen Kumar, The New York Times, March 6, 2023
Sunday, July 27, 2025 | 7pm at the Aurora in Berkeley
Monday, July 28, 2025 | 7pm at Z Below in San Francisco
___________________________________________________________
Recipe
by Michael Gene Sullivan
directed by Ansley Valentine
The Morning Glory Baking Circle seems like a harmless enough group of women bakers of retirement age... until they reveal the rest of their title, "for Revolutionary Self-Defense!" They may appear inoffensive, but they are as dedicated to making pies, cakes, muffins, and cobbler as they are to overthrowing the fascist corporatocracy of America... with a "K!"
But when they invite a young Black reporter to their rebel headquarters to divulge their latest plan for socialist revolution, the last thing they expect is that she might be an F.B.I. mole sent to infiltrate and destroy them. Or is she? Are they just paranoid old nuts, or has the government really taken notice of them?
1h 45m
“Part farce, part satire, even part mystery, but make no mistake: The political agenda of this seemingly dotty quartet is no joke. Funny, and alarming." — San Francisco Examiner, October 22, 2014
Monday, August 4, 2025 | 7pm at the Aurora in Berkeley
Tuesday, August 5, 2025 | 7pm at the Magic in San Francisco
Get Tickets
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