Berkshire Playwrights Lab Announces Cast for New Play by Philip Gerson

Berkshire Playwrights Lab will present a staged reading of Philip Gerson's new play Apeshit directed by Bob Jaffe on Monday, July 23 at 7:30pm at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center (14 Castle Street, Great Barrington, Mass.).

The cast includes Tom Bloom, Adam W. Green, Lou Liberatore, and Molly Ward. There is no charge for admission, however, Berkshire Playwrights Lab suggests a $10.00 donation to help offset its programming costs. For reservations, call413.528.0100 or visit the Mahaiwe box office in person. For more information, see www.berkshireplaywrightslab.org.

In Philip Gerson's Apeshit, a renowned primate researcher is taken hostage by a crazed animal rights activist, who is determined to liberate the researcher's famous chimpanzee. The chimp herself has a shocking reaction to that, and mayhem leads to murder and an evolutionary leap that even Darwin couldn't have imagined. Who's the murderer? Who's the victim? Who's the Alpha? Is everybody going ape, or just going to sh!t?

"Apeshit is a comic thriller of jungle instincts and cutting-edge science. We are thrilled to have Philip Gerson return to the Berkshire Playwrights Lab after the very successful reading of Eyes Forward in 2010, and its subsequent BPL reading in New York, said Co-Artistic Director Bob Jaffe. "This is a totally different style fromEyes Forward, showing the versatility of Philip's craft as a playwright."

Since its development by Berkshire Playwrights Lab, Philip Gerson's Eyes Forward has received the Stanley Drama Award and the Dorothy Silvers Playwriting Competition, and it has had staged readings at the Cleveland Playhouse, Amphibian Productions in Fort Worth, and the Road Theatre in Los Angeles. Gerson's other work for the theatre includes The Last Laugh (finalist for O'Neill National Playwrights Conference); Jumping Blind (NY Gayfest); Night (NY International Fringe Festival); the book for the musical The Last Metro, based on the Francois Truffaut film, (Musical Theatre Works in NY; Colony Theatre in LA); This Isn't What It Looks Like(workshops at the Gallery Players in Brooklyn and the Telluride Playwrights Festival in Colorado); and the books for the musical parodies Fiddler on the West Hollywood Roof and West Hollywood Gypsy, which were produced in LA to benefit AIDS charities by Charity Parody Productions with permissions of the original authors. He has also written extensively for television.

Bob Jaffe directed the world premiere of William S. Yellow Robe Jr.'s Better-n-Indins and the premieres of Were You There When the Sugar Beets Got Married? (commissioned by the violinist Midori, with text and illustrations by the late Maurice Sendak) and Grammy Award-winner Bill Harley's Get Lost: Rules for Travelers. He recently directed Susan Merson's solo play When They Go and You Do Not, which premiered at the Fountain Theatre in LA. Also an actor, he recently performed …and then you go on. An Anthology of the Works of Samuel Beckett (which he adapted) at The Cell Theatre in New York and toured a one-man show about hunger in America, But for the Grace… Jaffe has performed at the Berkshire Theatre Festival, La Mama E.T.C., the NY Fringe Festival, Trinity Repertory Company, the Providence Black Repertory Company, and Perishable Theatre, among others. He has appeared in the Showtime series Brotherhood, Law & Order: SVU, and a number of independent films. He is an Artist-in-Residence at the Cell Theatre and an Artist Member of Ensemble Studio Theatre, both in New York.

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