Claire McManus at The Charles R. Wood Theater

Claire McManus is a new play by Jake Shore and directed by Timothy Haskell about a famous classical musician, Claire McManus, who is a complicated and self-destructive tour-de-force. An addict, she intentionally sabotages her career and relationships in pseudo-psychological ways where the lines between truth and fiction are blurred in the style of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolff. Despite her best efforts, everyone is drawn to her no matter how much she pushes them away. Will she finally embrace her virtuosity, or is she destined to destroy herself?

Claire McManus stars Amanda Myst Leske, Russell Roberts, Gabriel Thom Pasculli, Karli Alanzi and is assistant directed by Jacqueline Smith.

Claire McManus runs June 3rd-4th at 7pm. The Wood Theater is located at 207 Glen St, Glens Falls, NY 12801. Tickets are $25.

Timothy Haskell (Director) has directed over 20 commercial Off-Broadway productions and countless off-off Broadway shows including: Road House the Stage Play Off-Broadway at the Barrow Street Theater, I Love Paris which ran Off-Broadway for 13 months at the Blue Heron, Corporate Rock at The Blue Heron, The Jaded Assassin a show that took place in one 65 minute long action sequence, Fatal Attraction: A Greek Tragedy starring Corey Feldman at the Classic Stage Company, James and the Giant Peach at St. John’s University, Smile in NYC’s first Horror Theater Festival, This is Real Immersive production that ran in Brooklyn for 6 months, Last Life at the Ohio Theater, Stitching Off-Broadway at The Wild Project and then moved to Los Angeles at The Elephant, Sex You (I'm Gonna) at the ACE Hotel and Best In Fringe at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and over a dozen early career off-off Broadway productions. He is perhaps best known, however, for his immersive theater work. He is the creator of the famed Halloween institution Nightmare in the lower east side (ran for 16 years and is returning this fall), as well as This is Real (ran for three years in Reds Hook Brooklyn), I Can't See (in Tribeca in 2019), and The Dark House last year in the Hudson Valley, in addition to sillier fare like Full Bunny Contact and Santastical.

Jake Shore's (Writer) plays have been presented in New York City at The Flea Theater, Theaterlab, The Chain Theatre, The Connelly Theater and others. His plays, including "Down the Mountain and Across the Stream" (2013), "Holy Moly" (2016), "The Devil Is on the Loose With an Axe in Marshalltown" (2017), “Adjust the Procedure” (2021), “Hit the Wall” (2022), “A Groundbreaking Achievement of Outrageous Importance That People Scroll By, Barely Impacted" (2024), “CON” (2024), and “The Slide Is the Negative” (2025) have been described by critics as "memorable" (BroadwayWorld), "not to miss" (Playbill), “engrossing and compelling” (TheaterScene), “extraordinary” (Stage and Cinema) and “striking” (Theatre Is Easy). His short stories have been published in Denver Quarterly, Hobart, Litro and many others.