Chester Theatre Company is fresh off their first play reading discussion, and it was wonderful! On Monday, a group gathered to talk about Pearl Cleage’s Flyin’ West. They shared a rich discussion about a remarkable piece that they wish they could have seen on stage as well as read. (A few…

After seven successful seasons as Producing Artistic Director at Chester Theatre Company (CTC), Daniel Elihu Kramer is leaving to focus on his increased responsibilities at Smith College and his work as a freelance theatre artist. Chester audiences are already familiar with the organization’s new leaders. Tara Franklin and James Barry, a couple who are known…

by Barbara Waldinger Chester Theatre Company’s mission statement includes two important goals:  offering audiences “fresh perspectives on vital issues” and developing and supporting new work.  Responding to this, along came Fran Henry, founder of a thirty-year-old organization called Stop It Now!, devoted to preventing “the sexual abuse of  children by…

Chester Theatre Company’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.…

by Macey Levin Pass Over is a difficult but intriguing play receiving a dynamic production at Chester Theatre Company in Chester, Massachusetts.  There are comic moments, emotional confrontations and times of darkness.  It is also rife with various symbols and references. The play is a depiction of America’s black minority…

Chester, MA–On July 28, Chester Theatre Company (CTC) will begin its two-week run of Pass Over, the show that reopened Broadway in 2021. The three-actor play, which shares some DNA with Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, stars Austin Sasser (Western Reserve Playhouse, Karamu House) as Kitch and Kayodè Soyemi (Actors Theatre of Louisville, Yale Cabaret, Dallas…

On Thursday, July 7, Chester Theatre Company (CTC) opens Birds of North America by Anna Ouyang Moench, “a beautiful look at a father and daughter who find in birding a surprising way to connect—to understand more about themselves, each other, and the changing world around them,” in the words of CTC Producing…

by Jeannie Marlin Woods When it comes to staging the classics, you have to be aware that the audience arrives with a set of preconceptions. When that classic is a revered novel such as Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, those preconceptions are quite varied and layered. Some spectators may…