Three World Premiere Plays from June 18th through September 6th
Great Barrington Public Theater Artistic Directors, Jim Frangione and Judy Braha, along with Managing Director, Serena Johnson, are excited to announce our upcoming summer 2026 season, fulfilling our mission of working with living playwrights to create new work as we double down on our developmental roots in downtown Great Barrington.
“We’ll present a season of world premiere plays at a newly-configured, intimate black box theater in the Great Hall at Saint James Place, with upgraded lighting and seating elements to create a unique space to embrace these provocative new plays”, says GBPT Artistic Director Jim Frangione.
The Season will begin June 18-July 5 with Fragments, written and performed by Jim Petosa, and directed by GBPT Artistic Director Judy Braha. Working with Jim Petosa, the playwright/performer, to explore this new script, we will spend a few days in process in late April that will culminate in a sneak peak of the piece, a developmental reading on May 2 at 4 PM. This will create the launch pad for us to move into rehearsal and performance of Fragments as our season opener in late June.
Director Judy Braha on the setting of the play, “In a world where it has become more and more common for history to be eroded, rewritten or erased entirely, Jim Petosa’s new play, Fragments, is a gift. Doing what the theater does best, this piece is a memoir of a very specific time and place that shines a light on the turbulent years from 1985-90 when the world was overtaken by the AIDS crisis. This is a very personal story of one couple’s pathway through it together.”
From Playwright Jim Petosa, “This memory play is written as a series of episodes. I call them fragments. For many years, these fragments were told as oral histories to friends who had the patience and the interest to hear them. Over time, each fragment evolved to have a shape, an appreciation for certain details, certain words that were said. Sharing these stories has shown me that they encourage each listener to reflect on their own experiences with loss, grief, and resilience. Alongside surprising moments of happiness and celebration, there is also a distinct appreciation for life’s absurdities. The mystery within these memories creates a sense of kinship among us, transforming despair into hope.”
Next up for the summer will be iBoss, from July 23-August 9, written by Thomas Kee and directed by Clay Hopper, director of last year’s highly acclaimed show How To Not Save the World with Mr. Bezos. Taking place in a not so distant future, the rapidly accelerating intelligence of AI systems has created “Lisa.” Powered by AI, she wields enormous power. Shockingly, Lisa displays an emergent property of AI — sentience. And from this newly sentient being something else emerges: an emotional agenda. As Job Johnson begins his first in-person evaluation, it’s clear this isn’t going to be just another day at the office.
On the topic of the effects of AI on our culture and how that drove his writing, playwright Thomas Kee comments, “So many people, so much of our diversity could potentially be lost as we are zoomed in on just one, two or three large language models, which are just feeding us this ready-to-go content. So, that is very much at the root of the dialogue of this play.”
Director Clay Hopper adds, “Any disruptive technology brings with it questions, but I can’t think of any in our collective past that brings up such profound ones as the rise of AI and Large Language Models. Questions we normally relegate to the fringes are now suddenly front and center: “What is the nature of consciousness?” “Can it be created?” “Are our tools a reflection of us, or do they have their own rules?”. Not to mention the political, social, and moral implications of outsourcing cognition. This play exposes all of the peril and possibility contained in our present moment, and like all good plays, it does it through character, intention, and situation, with dialogue that truly crackles with the sound of life itself.”
We’ll close out the Season from August 20-September 6 with Yellow Wallpaper 2.0 – 2020, written by Jennifer Maisel and directed by GBPT Artistic Director, Judy Braha. A riff on Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s classic domestic horror story about a woman driven crazy by the rest cure for postpartum depression, YELLOW WALLPAPER 2.0 – 2020 is about a female adjunct professor trying to thrive in COVID quarantine despite her toddler and demanding husband outside her bedroom and the personal demons she faces within.
Director Judy Braha puts the play into context, “This play takes us down the rabbit hole of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s profound short story The Yellow Wallpaper, written in 1892, but re-imagined here in the early days of the pandemic. An overwhelmed adjunct professor, newly a mother, struggles to make sense of their suddenly chaotic reality, her postpartum depression and the mysteries hidden inside their inherited “prewar-6” apartment on the Upper West Side. With humor, social critique and the quivering bones of a horror story, Jennifer Maisel’s wonderful play will sweep you down the rabbit hole with our heroine, T, and bring you face to face with her deep- 2020 dilemmas, passions and choices”.
Playwright Jennifer Maisel adds, “When the pandemic hit, my mind kept returning to Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1892 feminist short story, THE YELLOW WALLPAPER, an evocative tale of a woman confined to her room by her physician husband who has diagnosed her with hysteria; the storyteller develops a relationship with a woman she sees trapped behind the yellow wallpaper that obsesses her. The story originated with Gilman’s own experience of being forced into a rest cure for years of depression. The spirit, emotion and circumstance of Gilman’s story seemed so resonant of quarantine and the feminist issues of that day are sadly still relevant now. And there I saw it, a female professor, intoxicated with Gilman, forced into isolation because of the COVID crisis – and YELLOW WALLPAPER 2.0 – 2020 came to be.”
The company will perform all three shows at The Great Hall in Saint James Place, in downtown Great Barrington at 352 Main St, Great Barrington, MA 01230. Season Subscription tickets for the new season will go on sale today, March 4th on the GBPT website and by phone 413-372-1980. Single tickets will be going on sale in April.
Great Barrington Public Theater was founded by Jim Frangione and 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 readings, workshops, and fully-staged productions, involving local talent as often as possible and keeping ticket prices affordable.