Alliance Theatre Goes On Roller Coaster With ‘Ride The Cyclone’

“Ride The Cyclone” is making its regional debut in Atlanta.

Courtesy of the Alliance Theatre

The newest production coming to the Alliance Theatre stage is a real roller coaster ride of tragedy and comedy — as in an ACTUAL roller coaster.

“Ride The Cyclone” is making its regional debut in Atlanta after productions in Canada, Chicago, Seattle and Off-Broadway.

In it, the Saint Cassian High School Chamber Choir boards the Cyclone roller coaster, which breaks minutes later, killing all aboard. The teenagers wake up in an odd purgatory, where the carnival’s mechanical fortune teller gives them the chance to choose one among them to return to life.

“Each character gets a moment in the spotlight to tell their story and to express themselves as they wanted to be known,” director Leora Morris tells “City Lights” host Lois Reitzes. “In order to express the truth of who they are, the music, the choreography, the world they evoke speaks specifically to that character and what their longings and attachments and trauma were in life.”

Morris says that the show invites the fact of our mortality into the room, then demands that we celebrate life.

“Ride the Cyclone” runs at the Alliance Theatre May 1 to May 26.