The Alliance Theatre has long been home to stories of transformation, and during its 50th Anniversary Season, the Alliance celebrated a landmark transformation of its own with the opening of the new Coca-Cola Stage at Alliance Theatre.

Transforming experiences

The opening of the new space on January 16, 2019 was the culmination of more than five years of planning, a successful $35 million fundraising campaign, and an 18-month On the Road Season that took 12 full-scale productions to 13 venues around metro Atlanta.

The entire audience chamber was rebuilt, along with a new costume shop, rehearsal halls and production facilities.  The design and fabrication of the bent-oak woodwork that surrounds the space brought together high-tech innovation and old-world craftsmanship.

“As a result of this transformation, the Alliance is able to offer our patrons, our artists, and the city of Atlanta an iconic and defining space in which to experience and make theater,” says Jennings Hertz Artistic Director Susan V. Booth. “Our patrons have become accustomed to transformative theater on our stage, and now through the exceptional quality of this design, our architecture will match and enhance that artistry.”

Appropriately, the first production on the Coca-Cola Stage was a Cinderella story, the new musical Ever After. On opening night, a glittering 50th Anniversary Gala celebrated a half century of groundbreaking theater and toasted the next 50 years and beyond.

Transforming American theater

The Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition continued to spotlight the best emerging playwrights in the United States in 2019, giving new voices a professional stage for their work, and in the process, transforming American theater. Of the past 15 winners, 14 have been women or people of color (or both) – a particularly significant statistic, considering readers and Tjudges do not know the names of finalists until the winning script is selected.
Past winners of the Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition have become some of today’s most exciting playwrights and writers, including Tarell Alvin McCraney, whose play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue inspired the 2017 Academy Award-winning film for Best Picture, Moonlight; Kenneth Lin (Warrior Class), a playwright and writer for the second and third seasons of the Netflix hit original series “House of Cards,” Susan Smith Blackburn Prize finalist Meg Miroshnik (The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls), and Mike Lew (Tiger Style!), 2018 winner of the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award for an Emerging American Playwright.
The 2018/19 season marked the Alliance’s 15th Anniversary of the competition, with a full production for competition winner B.J. Tindal’s Goodnight, Tyler and staged readings for four competition finalists.
Transforming communities
Innovative programs like Alliance@Work are taking theater education from classrooms to boardrooms, and in the process, building partnerships that are transforming our communities.
Companies like Georgia Power, Chick-fil-A and ESPN are calling on Alliance@Work to improve storytelling, build executive presence, and create cultures of respect and civility in the workplace.
“Strategic Storytelling, Emotional Intelligence, Executive Presence – these are the foundational tools for any successful theater artist as well as the essential skills for any successful corporate leader.”
Best of all, Alliance@Work is a win-win for corporate partners and Georgia students. Revenue from Alliance@Work is directly reinvested in the Alliance’s in-school education programming. The Alliance’s in-school programs are committed to fighting the staggering statistic that only 40% of our students are reading proficiently by the end of third grade. During the 2018/19 school year, the Alliance’s in-school programs reached more than 12,000 students and 1,000 teachers across Atlanta and the state of Georgia.
In total, the Alliance’s education programs reach 90,000 students annually through these and other programs, productions, classes, and camps. And year after year, the Palefsky Collision Project and the Kathy and Ken Bernhardt Theatre for the Very Young welcome young people and their families to meet theater – and each other – with curiosity, compassion and joyful discovery.
Every day, as audiences enter the new Coca-Cola Stage, they are greeted by a wall of names – names of donors, board members, community partners and, in projections that appear as tickets are scanned, their own names as well. It is a thank you, a welcome and an invitation to an Atlanta community that is always changing, growing, transforming. These are your stories. This is your stage.