Cuenca Expats Magazine – Issue 44

Azuay Community Theater launches a record six-show season in a new, permanent home in El Centro

By John Olson
Photos courtesy of Teatro Community Theatre

ACT will for the first time present a six-show lineup of hits and lesser-known gems from Broadway and a staged radio play of one of Hollywood’s most loved holiday films, all previously unproduced here and in a new, comfortable El Centro location.

Cuenca’s original, English-language theater company, Azuay Community Theatre, has announced that it will perform the six plays between November 2023 and August 2024 in its new, stairless ground floor performance space at Vega Muñoz 14-46 (between Esteves de Toral and Coronel Talbot).

The company is presently preparing the space located just an eight-minute walk from Parque San Sebastián’s many restaurants.

Azuay Community Theater - Issue 44

And it is re-instituting its popular Social Hour Lounge with beverage service. 

Azuay Community Theater - Issue 44The company had performed for several years in a space on Ordoñez Lasso and staged two plays this past June and August in the Sala de Carrasco Theater of the Casa de la Cultura Building.

The season kicks off with The Cemetery Club, a comedy-drama about older adults dealing with the loss of their spouses that was a Broadway play before being adapted as a film starring Ellen Burstyn and Olympia Dukakis. For the holidays, ACT will present Miracle on 34th Street.

This year, 2023, is its third year of a completely different, staged radio play version of a holiday classic.

  • In February, the company will present Neil Simon’s The Prisoner of Second Avenue, a comedy about the stresses of big city life.
  • It will be followed by the classic comedy Blithe Spirit, by Britain’s legendary writer and actor Noël Coward.
  • April’s show will be the suspense comedy Murder at the Howard Johnson’s, in which a married couple and an illicit lover consider murder as the solution to their love triangle problems.
  • The season will conclude with the Tony Award- winning play The Waverly Gallery, a poignant and often hilarious play about a family dealing with the onset of dementia, by the author of the films Manchester by the Sea and You Can Count on Me.
Azuay Community Theater - Issue 44
Azuay Community Theater - Issue 44
Azuay Community Theater - Issue 44

Individual tickets, priced at $15, are available for The Cemetery Club at www.actseats.com

Those interested in participating onstage and backstage are encouraged to visit actseats.com/volunteer to learn about opportunities and register their interest.