The 2024 Fall Arts Preview: Our picks in theater

Theater has experiments in love, experiments in magic and a handful of classics on offer this fall.

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Playwright Lee Osorio’s daring exploration of a gay couple trying to keep things fresh by opening up their marriage will run at Actor’s Express from October 3 through October 27. The play, which was workshopped through Atlanta’s own Working Title Playwrights, won the Del Shores 2023 Writers Search, recognizing notable work by gay Southern writers.

Directed by Lauren Morris, A Third Way stars Braian Rivera Jimenez, Brandon Lee Browning, Ian Sawan and Cecilia Leal. Osorio said the play’s timely messages about how we define marriage and family will resonate with audiences.

“In the heart of a polarized election season, A Third Way offers a funny and sexy alternative to the binary,” Osorio said. — BC

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Continuing their dedication to play development, Synchronicity Theatre has announced its Stripped Bare Arts Incubator Project. Each play will receive a full workshop, culminating in a staged reading with no sets, costumes or anything other than words.

The lineup begins November 13 with Elaina Walton’s introspective A Play Formerly Known As… Set in timeless limbo, the play explores the intricacies of Black femininity using seven actors to represent the different parts of a woman. Beginning with vignettes introducing each part, the play then explores how these parts work together in times of strife.

Continuing into 2025, the lineup includes I Am a Dead Man (January 15), Stephen Ruffin and Filipe Valle Costa’s adaptation of Mia Couto’s novel Under the Frangipani; followed by Intergenerational Caregiving Pretzel (April 16), a devised piece by Rachel Mewborn about the challenges faced by multiple generations of women; and Viscera by Meaghan Novoa (May 13 and May 14), a dance piece about the musculoskeletal system. — LE

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Returning to one of his earliest scripts after nearly 20 years, Atlanta playwright and screenwriter Topher Payne said in a recent interview he feels as though he’s co-authored the new version of the comedy The Attala County Garden Club with his younger self.

“It was commissioned by Onstage Atlanta in 2006,” Payne said. “It’s set in 1987, during my own childhood, and it tells the story of a young wife and mother who’s rejected for membership in the city garden club. She’s offered the chance to join an offshoot county version, made up of other rejected applicants. Her delight in joining the club is tempered somewhat when she realizes she’s joined a coven of witches.”

In the original version, that was the big twist. But Payne reveals it quickly in the update.

“That information comes out, then we get to the real meat of things,” he said. “These women have been told that they have no place in the town that they call home, and they are giving into the temptation to use magic to their own advantage to extract revenge.”

The Process Theatre Company will stage the production, directed by DeWayne Morgan, from September 13 through September 29 at OnStage Atlanta in Scottdale. — BC

More theater highlights . . .

• Engage your inner teen with the hit musical about following your dreams — Hairspray takes the stage at Out Front Theatre October 24 through November 9.
• See one of the Bard’s enduring classics this season at Atlanta Shakespeare Theatre — Hamlet will be on stage November 9-December 1, starring Mary Ruth Ralston in the titular role.
• Relive the story of Blanche, Stella and Stanley — A Streetcar Named Desire is onstage with Marietta’s Actors’ Theatre of the South at Sewell Mill Library and Cultural Center, September 6 through September 15.
• Sing along to Meredith Willson’s hit musical The Music Man, a six-time-winner of the Tony Award, onstage at City Springs Theatre Company September 6 through September 22 — directed by Shuler Hensley.
• A Raisin the Sun — Lorraine Hansbury’s American classic about Black life in Chicago’s South Side — gets a fresh staging at Theatrical Outfit September 11 through September 29.
• Enjoy a slice of The Cake, an LBGTQ+ dramedy written by Becca Brunstetter and directed by Clifton Guterman, as part of South Fulton Arts’ Courageous Conversations, September 13 through September 21.
• Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap, a murder mystery set in a snowy countryside, will kick off Stage Door Theatre’s 51st season, October 12 through October 27.
• Inspired by the true story of 14-year-old Chinese immigrant Afong Moy, The Chinese Lady is on the Hertz Stage at Alliance Theatre September 18 through October 13.
• Center for Puppetry Arts will stage the musical Pancho Rabbit and the Coyote September 17 through October 20 — a Mexican folktale about rabbits who must migrate to save their family.
• Get your head start on spooky season with Little Shop of Horrors, kicking off the Big Tent Series at Serenbe Art Farm September 20 through September 29.
• The story of a toxic love triangle set in rural poverty, Mud is onstage at Emory’s Mary Gray Munroe Theater October 3 through October 12.
• Before Emily in Paris there was Amélie, an award-winning musical about a young woman’s adventures abroad. It’s onstage at Horizon Theatre Company October 4 through November 3.

More 2024 Fall Picks