THE MAKING OF A GREAT MOMENT Begins Tonight at Urban Stages
Award-winning Off-Broadway theater Urban Stages will produce Peter Sinn Nachtrieb's play The Making of a Great Moment, directed by James Barry, Chester Theater Company's Co-Producing Artistic Director. Learn more about the production here!
Photos: First Look at the World Premiere of HOW TO LIVE at LABA
Mindy Pfeffer’s new play HOW TO LIVE opened on January 25 at the 14th Street Y in the East Village. The World Premiere runs until January 29 and is being presented by LABA (A Laboratory for Jewish Culture), a NYC-based artist fellowship program for which Pfeffer was a part of in 2021. Jean Randich directs. Check out photos here!
Chester Theatre Company Presents TO THE MOON AND BACK Beginning This Week
CTC’s 2022 season will close with the World Premiere of To the Moon and Back, written by Darcy Parker Bruce, and starring Tara Franklin (Tiny Beautiful Things, On the Exhale, Sister Play) and Raye Birk (Curve of Departure) as a daughter and father with history as murky as the dark side of the moon.
THE NICETIES Will Be Performed By Chester Theatre Company Beginning Next Week
The play is inspired, in part, by a 2015 controversy at Yale, where a professor’s email set off a debate and subsequent protests about the role white supremacy can play on campus, contributing to a hostile environment for students of color. It explores the critical need for communication and reaching across a divide to find a place of understanding.
BWW Review: THE CAKE: Two Brides, One Conundrum for North Carolina Baker
In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court handed a narrow victory to a Christian baker from Colorado who refused for religious reasons to make a wedding cake for a gay couple. Hailing from a conservative North Carolina background, playwright Bekah Brunstetter is personally familiar with people like Della, the protagonist of THE CAKE, and ideally positioned to protect her and defend her humanity, while also setting her on a path to self-reflection and change. Although the story may be ripped from the headlines, Brunstetter tells it from the perspectives of a quartet of ordinary, yet multi-faceted characters, each of whom comes with a strong set of beliefs.
BWW Review: ADMISSIONS: Biting Comedy Asks You to Check Your Privilege
It's probably just a coincidence, but two fine plays currently running at two award-winning regional theaters share an unusual commonality. Both focus on the issue of white privilege and the prevailing attitude that acknowledging its existence will end it. In THE THANKSGIVING PLAY at Lyric Stage Company of Boston, the idea is to honor Native Americans in an elementary school play without benefit of any of them participating. In ADMISSIONS, receiving its Boston premiere at SpeakEasy Stage Company, a couple of white liberal educators work hard to expand racial diversity at their small New England prep school, but their progressive values are tested when their exceptional son's Ivy League dreams are derailed. Remarkably, there are no indigenous people or people of color on stage in either production, an intentional, pointed omission by the playwrights.
ADMISSIONS Comes to SpeakEasy Stage
From October 25 to November 30, 2019, SpeakEasy Stage Company will present the New England premiere of ADMISSIONS, the winner of the 2018 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play.
Chester Theatre Company Stages ON THE EXHALE
Chester Theatre Company (CTC) presents Martín Zimmerman's On the Exhale July 25-August 4. First preview is July 25 at 2:00pm, and the opening is July 25 at 8:00pm. Written in the wake of the Sandy Hook school shooting, the play takes a unique look at the issues surrounding guns and gun violence in America. The production stars CTC Associate Artistic Director and Berkshire native Tara Franklin.
FUN HOME Returns To SpeakEasy Stage
Due to popular demand, SpeakEasy Stage will proudly remount its acclaimed production of the Tony Award-winning musical FUN HOME for four weeks, June 8-30, 2019.
BWW Review: Israeli Stage Bows Out With N.E. Premiere of THE RETURN
Even as Artistic Director and Founder Guy Ben-Aharon rings down the curtain on Israeli Stage after nine seasons, his final offering draws back the curtain to give us a peek at the human collateral damage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Playwrights Hanna Eady and Edward Mast's collaboration on THE RETURN, receiving its New England Premiere production at Deane Hall at the Boston Center for the Arts, holds a mirror up to the deep fracture caused by the long-running and controversial hostilities within the State of Israel and throughout the Middle East. Philana Mia (Her) and Nael Nacer (Him) combine in a tours de force performance to portray the humanity of two people, virtually powerless in an inhumane world.
Chester Theatre Company Announces 2019 Season Casting
Co-founded by Vincent Dowling and H. Newman Marsh in 1990 with the belief that every town should have a professional theatre, Chester Theatre Company (formerly The Miniature Theatre of Chester) prepares to celebrate its landmark 30th Season with four works, each a New England Premiere.