About Us

Mission

Atlanta’s national theater, expanding hearts and minds on stage and off.

Vision

The Alliance Theatre will lead the national field by deeply engaging with its local community, modeling radical inclusion and catalytic experience on our stage, in our classrooms, and throughout Atlanta.

About

The Alliance Theatre is Atlanta’s national theater, expanding hearts and minds onstage and off. Founded in 1968, the Alliance Theatre is the leading producing theater in the Southeast, reaching more than 165,000 patrons annually. The Alliance delivers powerful programming that challenges adult and youth audiences to think critically and care deeply. The Alliance Theatre is a recipient of the Regional Theatre Tony Award® in recognition of sustained excellence in programming, education and community engagement.

Known for its exemplary artistic standards and national role in creating significant theatrical works, the Alliance has premiered more than 140+ original productions, professionally launching important American musicals with a strong track record of Broadway, touring and subsequent productions, including the Tony Award winners The Color Purple, based on the novel by Alice Walker; Aida by Elton John and Tim Rice; and Alfred Uhry’s The Last Night of Ballyhoo. Recent musical premieres include Sister Act: The Musical, Twyla Tharp’s Come Fly Away, Bring It On: The Musical, Stephen King and John Mellencamp’s Ghost Brothers of Darkland County, Harmony – A New Musical by Barry Manilow and Bruce Sussman, Tuck Everlasting, The Prom, Janece Shaffer and Kristian Bush’s Troubadour, Becoming Nancy, Trading Places, Water for Elephants, The Preacher’s Wife, and Maybe Happy Ending – winner of the 2025 Tony Award for Best Musical.

The Alliance nurtures the careers of emerging writers through the Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition, producing the world premiere for the competition winner as part of the regular season. The Alliance is also deeply committed to Atlanta artists, showcasing locally based artists on a nationally watched stage, and sustaining Atlanta’s artistic community through the Reiser Atlanta Artists Lab, which provides developmental support and production resources for an annual roster of locally sourced performance projects.

The Alliance’s dedication to providing access to the arts is reflected in its commitment to creating new work for all ages, and to bringing that work into classrooms and communities across Atlanta and throughout the region. More than 80,000 students each year experience age-specific professional performances and participate in acting classes, drama camps and in-school initiatives through the Alliance Theatre Acting Program and Education Department. The Alliance’s groundbreaking Bernhardt Theatre for the Very Young performances offer professionally produced, fully interactive theater for infants and toddlers; the Palefsky Collision Project invites high school artists to create and perform new civic-minded theater based on a classic text; and community acting classes and skill-building workshops engage professional artists, young actors, business leaders and curious learners of all ages. Twice recognized by the U.S. Department of Education for leadership in arts education, the Alliance Theatre Institute equips classroom teachers with theatrical techniques that link directly to school curriculum and have been empirically proven to improve student learning.

Brandon Kahn, Tinashe Kajese-Bolden, and Christopher Moses indoors in front of a wooden slatted wall. One man is in a blue suit, a woman is in a white blouse and blue pants, and another man is in a dark blazer and black shirt.

People

Meet the dedicated people that make our work possible including our staff, a generous volunteer Board of Directors and Advisory Board, and countless artists and instructors working to put the best theater in the world on stage every day.

Staff

Board of Directors & Advisory Board

Production History

Since 1968, the Alliance has been home to more than 140 premieres, including 11 that have transferred to Broadway, including Maybe Happy Ending – winner of the Tony Award for Best Musical in the 2025/26 Broadway season.

See our full production history

A man and woman dance on stage between two doorways, with warm lighting and a circular design in the background. From the production Maybe Happy Ending on Broadway.
Production photo from Water for Elephants showing two actors, a woman on the right and a man on the left staring into each others' face.
A person in glasses sits on a bed playing guitar, looking concerned. A laptop and string lights are visible in the cozy, decorated bedroom.
A person in a yellow suit and hat dances on stage with two performers in elaborate green costumes and headdresses, set against a forest-themed backdrop.