Arizona Theatre Company to Stage Pulitzer Prize Winner DISGRACED, 10/17-11/7

Disgraced, Ayad Akhtar's edge-of-your-seat Pulitzer Prize- winning play about a successful Muslim-American lawyer whose dinner guests' discussion of race and identity explodes to reveal racial prejudices and personal secrets plays at the Temple of Music and Art from Oct. 17 through Nov. 7. I. Michael and Beth Kasser are Arizona Theatre Company's 2015-16 Season Sponsors.

The New York Times described the Tony Award-nominee for Best Play as a play that "bristles with wit and intelligence. Mr. Akhtar, a novelist and screenwriter, puts contemporary attitudes toward religion under a microscope, revealing how tenuous self-image can be for people born into one way of being who have embraced another. Terrific, turbulent, Disgraced comes roaring to life."

In Disgraced, American-born, Muslim-raised corporate lawyer Amir Kapoor is happy, in love, and about to land the biggest career promotion of his life. But beneath the veneer, his success has come at a price. When Amir and his WASP up-and-coming-artist wife, Emily, host an intimate dinner party at their Upper East Side apartment, what starts out as a friendly celebration soon escalates into something far more damaging. Joined by Amir's African-American work colleague, Jory, and her Jewish husband, Isaac, all the elements for fireworks are in place at a party that swiftly turns towards chaos and violence.

"Disgraced will be the most-produced play in the nation this year and it is no mystery why," said ATC Artistic Director David Ira Goldstein, who will be directing the production. "Ayad Akhtar's masterful play seems to be more current every day. Written with the taut, brute force which comes from vital issues of racial identity, religious belief and international power politics, the play has much of the power of a great classic tragedy."

Tickets for Disgraced are $23-$63 and can be purchased at www.arizonatheatre.org, by calling (520) 622-2823 or at the Temple of Music and Art Box Office at 333 S. Scott Ave.

Disgraced will be followed by Stephen Schwartz's new musical, Snapshots (Nov. 29-Dec. 19), brings some of his favorite songs into a new context wrapped in a story filled with humanity and family. Two great American classics follow with August Wilson's masterpiece Fences (Jan. 16, 2016-Feb. 2) featuring favorite ATC artists, and John Steinbeck's classic tale of friendship in hard circumstances, Of Mice and Men (March 5-26). In between, is a special presentation of the recent off-Broadway hit Sex With Strangers (Feb. 11-21) in a unique collaboration with ATC and popular Phoenix-based theatre company Stray Cat Theatre.

ATC's 2015-16 season comes to a sparkling close with the witty Arizona premiere of Scott Carter's new play, The Gospel According to Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens and Count Leo Tolstoy: Discord (April 9-30).

For more information call (520) 622-2823 or visit www.arizonatheatre.org.