Charles Schoonmaker

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!

Recently appointed Co-Producing Artistic Directors James Barry and Tara Franklin have announced the full casting for Chester Theatre Company’s 2023 season, the first under their direction. 

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!

Mindy Pfeffer's thought provoking new play HOW TO LIVE is slated to have its World Premiere at the 14th Street Y in the East Village in January 2023.

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.

After two seasons away, Chester Theatre Company (CTC), under the leadership of Producing Artistic Director Daniel Elihu Kramer, will return to the Town Hall Theatre, its beloved home in Chester, MA.

'He has a story to tell- it is banging around inside him, aching to come out. But how does he begin?' These are the first words the audience of SpeakEasy Stage's production of Matthew López's play THE INHERITANCE. The six-and-a-half-hour play (presented in two parts) explores what it means to write the 'story of our lives' and how our place in the world impacts those who come after us.

From April 22 – June 11, 2022, SpeakEasy Stage Company will proudly present the US Regional Theatre premiere of Matthew López’s epic two-part drama THE INHERITANCE, winner of the 2020 Tony Award for Best Play.  

The original production, co-conceived by Marshall Heyman, Thomas Kail, and Vardalos, premiered in 2016 at The Public Theater and starred Vardalos in the leading role. It was directed by Kail, known to many theatregoers as the director of the hit musical Hamilton.

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.

A man has traveled to where we live, from somewhere undisclosed. Business or pleasure? Neither. Eno’s script is bursting with moments that are simultaneously intriguing, amusing, and enigmatic.

Two dozen nominations of outstanding actors, directors, designers and ensembles were announced today by The Boston Theater Critics Association (BTCA) for the 38th Annual Elliot Norton Awards.

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.

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.

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 (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.

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.

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.

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.

The Independent Reviewers of New England (IRNE) today announced the nominees for the 23rd Annual IRNE Awards, which honor the best of the previous year's actors, directors, choreographers, designers and companies across the full spectrum of large, mid-size and fringe theater companies. Moulin Rouge!, a new musical produced by Global Creatures, and An American in Paris, produced by the Ogunquit Playhouse, led with 12 and 11 nominations, respectively, in the Large Stage Musical Category. The Huntington Theatre led all companies with 31 nominations across seven productions, including 11 for Man in the Ring, the story of six-time world champion prizefighter Emile Griffith.