GB Public’s Artistic Director Jim Frangione will host and moderate the live, onstage talk and follow-up Q&A with his counterpart, colleague and a driving force behind New York’s multi-award-winning Atlantic Theater Company.
This is GBPT’s second in a series of conversations with industry influencers. It’s a FREE live event, at St. James Place, with a $10 suggested donation, but space is limited. Seats can be reserved now by emailing Tristan.GreatBarringtonPublic@gmail.com
Frangione and Pepe have been friends since early in their NYC careers, and look forward to talking to Berkshire theater lovers about creativity and trends in contemporary theater. They’ll talk the good, the bad, the ugly, and how plays get from being good on paper to great onstage. Their discussion will be followed by an open Q&A.
Frangione explains, “Our Conversation With series invites audiences to join in illuminating and always fun discussions on how to create extraordinary theater. This chat with Neil will be chock-full of backstories, inside know-how, and unexpected insights.”
“It will be fun to swap ideas with Jim and the Berkshire theater community,” Pepe says. “Atlantic Theater Company has been built by artists diving into conversation about what makes a script, a scene, an actor or play stand out, what makes art, language and technique effective. Dialogue is the nuts and bolts of great theater. Anyone who loves the creativity of theater will get something from our shoptalk.”
Neil Pepe has innumerable credits and accomplishments in theater, from leading one the most respected, vibrant stage companies in the country to nurturing and directing many of the extraordinary key plays in the modern American canon. He has been the Artistic Director of Atlantic Theater Company since 1992, and in 2009 was recognized by peers with a Drama Desk Special Award for Artistic Excellence. In 2022 he received a Tony Nomination for Best Director for the Broadway revival of American Buffalo with Sam Rockwell, Laurence Fishburne and Darren Criss. His extensive list of Broadway credits include (among countless other titles): Hands on a Hardbody; Speed-the-Plow; A Life in the Theatre. At the Atlantic Theater Company he’ s directed Simon Stephen’s On the Shore of the Wide World, Cornelia Street (with music by Mark Eitzel); David Mamet’s The Penitent, Romance; Kenneth Lonergan’s Hold on to Me Darling; Moira Buffini’s Dying for It; John Guare’s 3 Kinds of Exile; Ethan Coen’s Almost An Evening; Harold Pinter’s Celebration and The Room; Sam Shepard’s Evanescence or Shakespeare in the Alley; Hilary Bell’s Wolf Lullaby. Off-Broadway and elsewhere he’s directed plays such as Eric Bogosian’s Red Angel (Williamstown); Zinnie Harris’ Further Than the Furthest Thing (MTC); Jez Butterworth’s Parlour Song, Mojo; Jessica Goldberg’s Refuge (Playwrights’ Horizons).
Great Barrington Public Theater was founded by Artistic Director Jim Frangione and Executive Director Deann Simmons Halper to create opportunities for theater artists in the Berkshires and neighboring regions. Great Barrington Public Theater recognizes the many excellent playwrights, actors, directors, designers, administrators and technicians living in the Berkshires and surrounding areas. Our objective is to bring a mix of new and contemporary plays to the stage in a variety of formats; to generate and foster creative and rigorous opportunity for local theater artists, while engaging our theatergoing public with new and contemporary readings, workshops, and fully staged productions, involving local talent as often as possible, and always keeping ticket prices affordable.