Great Barrington Public Theater To Showcase Female Playwrights for Summer Season

In an update to the season lineup, Great Barrington Public Theater has announced a pivot, showcasing a season of female playwrights taking the stage at Daniel Arts Center, Bard College at Simon's Rock.

“Due to unforeseen circumstances, we are shifting gears and no longer presenting the previously announced solo play Grant; An Evening with the General,” GB Public Artistic Director Jim Frangione announces.

“We are now pleased to announce, in its place, the world premiere play, The Best Medicine, by Robin Gerber.”

Robin Gerber is the playwright behind The Shot featured in GB Public's 2022 Season.The Shot starred Sharon Lawrence as legendary Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham, playing its brief run to sold out houses. Berkshire On Stage called The Shot “an incredible achievement and unforgettable theatre.”

The Best Medicine is a world-premiere of Gerber's latest work that is based on her own personal experiences with caregiving and the realities of aging, while finding comfort in perhaps an atypical way. In this hilarious and poignant play, a stand-up comedy class becomes a salvation and a portal to a transforming truth about life and love.   

“I thought I was writing a play about caregiving,” says playwright Robin Gerber “but the words carried me to the shores of love in all its mystery and complexity...Maybe we can learn together that life is simpler than we thought. What if it's just about learning to love?”

The Best Medicine will be directed by Matthew Penn, who directed last summer's Berkshire Eagle “Best of The Berkshires” play, Survival of the Unfit. Casting is underway.

Great Barrington Public's season opens with up-and-coming playwright Maggie Kearnan's' How to Not Save the World with Mr Bezos, followed by GBPT's first commissioned work, Madame Mozart, The Lacrimosa, by beloved local playwright Anne Undeland. 

“We are pleased to present three world premiere plays, all written by female playwrights and all with female protagonists,” GB Public Artistic Director Jim Frangione says, “I'm excited to have these three terrific writers join us in the rehearsal process, pencil and (perhaps laptop) at the ready to help polish our season of groundbreaking new work. Dynamic stories of the unrepentant, the indefatigable and the underestimated, from 1791 and from today.”

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