Marc Acito Joins Alienated Creative Team

The creative team Kurt Crowley and Aaron Kirk Douglas, co-creators of the new musical Alienated are pleased to announce the addition of nationally known playwright Marc Acito to the show’s creative team.

Both Douglas and Crowley are excited to be working with Acito who was profiled last month in Playbill for his current work on the new musical adaptation of Room With a View. Acito is the author of the comic novels "How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship and Musical Theater" (a New York Times editors’ choice) and its sequel, "Attack of the Theater People." He co-wrote the twisted Christmas comedy, "Holidazed", a 2011 finalist for best play by the Oregon Book Awards, and he performs "singing commentaries" on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered."

“Marc Acito has terrific narrative chops.” -- People Magazine

Douglas and Crowley have been working since 2009 on Alienated (formerly Planet Eden) a new musical about a group of people living at a high-desert UFO Sanctuary awaiting an alien invasion. Alienated enjoyed two staged readings at CoHo Theatre (directed by Bruce Hostetler) followed by readings (directed by Dan Murphy) at the Broadway Rose Theatre in October 2010 and January 2011 as part of the Fertile Ground city-wide festival of new works.

In a rare review of a staged reading, Willamette Week writer John Minervini wrote “The characters are engaging; the dialogue is witty and fast-paced, and the music is technically accomplished, employing leitmotif and counterpoint. At its best, [the show] recalls the energetic camp of early Stephen Sondheim...”

“This is our first musical,” said Douglas. “We know that our audiences love the concept and after meeting with Marc and talking about the show we know that he will be able to help us take it to the next level artistically.” Alienated is based on a unique concept that melds showtunes with “a group of singing misfits who gleefully prepare for their alien abduction in advance of the end of the world.”

"Misfits, aliens and show tunes," says Acito, "what's not to like?"

Kurt Crowley is the show’s composer/co-lyricist; both he and Acito live in Manhattan. Co-lyricist and producer Aaron Kirk Douglas continues to reside in Portland where he works as a communications professional in commercial real estate at HFO Investment Real Estate and volunteers for Big Brothers Big Sisters Columbia Northwest on the board of the nonprofit Portland Area Theatre Alliance.