ARC HISTORY

 

When the Pandemic began and theaters shuttered in the San Francisco Bay Area, closed all over the globe, artists worldwide lost in one stroke, their platforms, their stages. We lost our voices, identities and jobs overnight with no hope of potential stage work for an indeterminate amount of time. This group was born out of a reaction to that sudden silencing of our voices and our mutual need to tell stories, our mutual love of words, of Theatre and our need to gather and celebrate each other and the craft we love. It began as a small meeting of friends reading plays on Thursdays at Seven, and has since grown to many members boasting an impressive roster of new generation and well-known Bay Area actors committed to telling stories and to supporting our fellow professionals.

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With no boards to tread, our solution was not to try to recreate theatre online, but rather to distill our readings down to the simplest and purest form of Theatre there is: the playwright's words. We challenged ourselves to tell a story with no rehearsal. We gave ourselves five days with a script—sometimes less—in an attempt to create a one-time, immediate and visceral experience. In the deft hands of the actors in our group these stories have blossomed to life for us and others in unexpected ways, and captivated us, experienced theatre professionals, with their beauty and simplicity.

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Out of these Thursdays at Seven, was born the Actors' Reading Collective (ARC): our performance group created to present our readings to the public, with that same focus on the essence of the theatre: words spoken without frills or furbelows. Simply ARC—a company of actors, by actors, for actors.   

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With the size of our group we can perform any play written. With the range of actors we have, we can fill any role. We can perform plays not seen or heard in years because they’re too expensive or unwieldy and investigate again old works of note that theaters today no longer attempt. 

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Though we are primarily San Francisco Bay Area actors, we include members from all over the country. We charge no membership fees for our service and we voluntarily lend our free time and efforts to make this cooperative a working venture.

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What became of our Thursdays at Seven reading group? Oh, we still meet. There we read plays we don’t know, read plays we know and love, and explore new Playwrights' works. We invite guests but don’t market these readings. These are for us.