Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater Announces Season Of World Premiere Productions.

Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater has announced its 2025 Summer Theater Season, featuring three world-premiere productions on The Julie Harris Stage.

The 41th season starts June 25 with SACCO AND VANZETTI'S DIVINE COMEDY by Kevin Rice. This darkly comedic exploration of one of the most controversial trials of the 20th century combines equal parts wit, anarchy, slapstick comedy, immigration and capital(ist) punishment.

When a prominent citizen in a small Texas town is murdered, the tight-knit community is transformed in unexpected ways. SOUTHERN HARMONY, A MURDER BALLAD by playwright and songwriter Kevin Fogarty has its world-premiere on the Julie Harris stage starting August 6.

Paul Cézanne and Émile Zola were inseparable as schoolboys in Provence, but as each rose to prominence in Paris they experienced a bitter and inexplicable falling out.  Kai Maristed's PAUL AND ÉMILE reunites Cézanne and Zola after two decades of silence and brings their hidden secrets into the light.  Paul and Émile runs September 18 – October 12.

"Creative risk is at the core of all that we do at WHAT, and I can think of no greater way to stretch our creative muscles than through developing and producing new work,” Artistic Director Christopher Ostrom says of this year's play selection. “This season reaffirms our commitment to adventurous and eclectic programming, and the importance of providing a forum for the sharing of stories both old and new.  I am especially excited to be producing two plays by local playwrights in celebration of the incredible creative community on the Outer Cape."

SACCO AND VANZETTI'S DIVINE COMEDY

by Kevin Rice

June 27 – July 26, 2025

(previews June 25 & 26, 2025)

 One of the most controversial trials of the 20th century, the trial and conviction of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti during the United States' first Red Scare, led to public protest around the world. In this new dark comedy, the sensationalized trial is served up over three meals featuring a unique Italian recipe seasoned with equal portions of wit, anarchy, slapstick comedy, immigration and capital(ist) punishment.

Playwright Kevin Rice has written eleven plays, several of which have been staged at WHAT or Payomet Performing Arts Center where he serves as Executive Director. Among them, The Pickleball Wars, Under The Radar, Hopper's Ghosts, One Night In The Life Of Denise Ivanovich, and an adaptation of Oblomov which was also produced in Russia.  Kevin lives in Wellfleet Massachusetts with his wife Marla.

SOUTHERN HARMONY

A MURDER BALLAD

book, music, and lyrics by Kevin Fogarty

August 8 – September 6, 2025

(previews August 6 & 7, 2025)

He was a friendly mortician. She was a wealthy widow. They were an unlikely pair.  The murder was just the beginning. Now a community has to rethink everything they know about right and wrong to try to make sense of it all. The line between good and evil runs right through the heart of Texas in this new musical based on a true story.

Kevin Fogarty is a contemporary musical theatre composer and lyricist, a recognized commercial songwriter, and an experienced multi-instrumentalist. A finalist for the John Wallowitch Award, a Pipeline Theatre Grant, and the Pamela Phillips Oland Excellence in the Art of Writing Lyrics Award UNLV, his work has been selected for both the New Voices at CUA Music Festival and the Manhattan Repertory Theatre Summerfest. His songs have been featured twice by Cutting Edge Composers, a concert series featured at the New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF). His musicals have been produced as readings, full productions, and workshopped by Montgomery Bell Academy, Skyline Theatre, and the Encore Theatre. 

A member of the BMI Lehman Engel Advanced Workshop, his current projects include music and lyrics for Unbelievable (with composer Rachel DeVore Fogarty and book writer John DeVore), a musical about female baseball pitcher Jackie Mitchell; and as a lyricist, he collaborated with Rachel DeVore Fogarty on the musical A Thousand Faces (book by Eric Lane, directed by Sam Scalamoni) about silent film star Lon Chaney.  He and his wife Rachel can also be seen performing in NYC with their band “The Tipsy Pigeons”.

PAUL AND ÉMILE

OR, THE MASTERPIECE

by Kai Maristed

September 20 – October 12, 2025

(previews September 18 & 19, 2025)

Paul Cézanne and Émile Zola were inseparable as schoolboys in Aix-en-Provence.  Once up in Paris they shivered sharing a bed and eating broiled sparrows, impatient for the world to recognize their genius, one as painter, the other as writer. Then, inexplicably, came a bitter falling out and a mystifying two decades of silence.  But what might happen when they are unexpectedly reunited, in Cézanne's studio, at the height of their separate life journeys?

Kai Maristed was born in Chicago, studied economics and political science in Munich and at MIT, and has worked as a broadcast journalist and playwright in Germany, as an international business consultant for BCG, and on the faculties of universities in Europe and the United States. She is the author of three novels: Broken Ground (2003), Fall (1996) and Out After Dark (1993) and a collection of stories, Belong to Me (1997).  Her shorter work has appeared in The American Scholar, The Kenyon Review, StoryQuarterly, Zoetrope, The American Voice, Ploughshares, AGNI, the Iowa Review and elsewhere. She is a frequent book reviewer for print and online, and occasional translator from German and French. Kai volunteered and served for three years as CFO with a rural hospital in Haiti, has taught at the MFA level at Harvard, Emerson College and the Warren Wilson Program. She lives in Paris, France and on Cape Cod, when not on the move.

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