Join Artistic Director Pam MacKinnon in conversation with stage director KJ Sanchez on American Conservatory Theater’s upcoming production of Private Lives, along with a preview of the 24-25 season.
Bay Area favorite KJ Sanchez reimagines and directs Noël Coward’s hysterical classic tale of the tempestuous dance that is marriage. Reset to 1930s Argentina and featuring sensual tango dancing, Coward’s iconic, wry comedy sings with spiky repartee. When an explosive divorced couple and their new spouses inadvertently honeymoon in adjacent rooms at the same hotel, combustible chemistry reignites, strong passions and stronger personalities take over, and mayhem ensues. Brace yourself and prepare to laugh at what director Sanchez calls a “saucy, brassy, and rude” battle of equals that’s “as much about fighting as it is making love.”
The discussion will be followed by a tour of Mechanics' Institute's historic library space and chess room!
Mechanics' Institute members get 20% off tickets to Private Lives! Use code MECHANICS at checkout (Tickets go on sale on August 15).
A.C.T. is a Tony Award-winning nonprofit theater serving almost 200,000 people in the San Francisco Bay Area annually through theater, training, education and community programs.
Pam MacKinnon is entering her seventh season as A.C.T.’s fourth artistic director. She is a Tony, Drama Desk, Joe A. Callaway, and two-time Obie Award–winning director, having directed upwards of 80 productions around the country, off Broadway, on Broadway and in London. Her Broadway credits include Amélie: A New Musical (with Phillipa Soo), Beau Willimon’s The Parisian Woman (with Uma Thurman), David Mamet’s China Doll (with Al Pacino), Wendy Wasserstein’s The Heidi Chronicles (with Elisabeth Moss), Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance (with Glenn Close and John Lithgow), Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and Bruce Norris’s Clybourne Park. She has been recognized as among the 25 Most Influential San Franciscans of 2020 by San Francisco Magazine, along with Jennifer Bielstein. Pam is the most recent past president of SDC, the national union representing stage directors and choreographers.
KJ Sanchez (director, Private Lives) is the founder and CEO of American Records, dedicated to new plays that chronicle our time. In the Bay Area, she has directed at Cal Shakes: Romeo y Juliet (co-adaptor with Karen Zacarias) and Octavio Solis’ Quixote Nuevo; at Berkeley Repertory Theatre she was the author (with Jenny Mercein) of X’s and O’s (A Football Love Story) and originated the role of Thyona in Chuck Mee’s Big Love. Sanchez voices characters on the cartoons Dora the Explorer and Go Diego Go, is a recipient of the Rella Lossy Playwright Award and teaches at UT Austin.