SEARCHING FOR MR. MOON

DATES Nov. 3 - Nov. 21, 2021

RUN TIME tbd

PRICE In-Theater $20-$68 • Digital on Demand $25

PLAYWRIGHT Richard Topol & WIlly Holtzman

Featuring Broadway Star Richard Topol

At the moment of his daughter’s birth, Rich Topol searches for a father to replace the one he lost and finds two – his famous father-in-law Lukas Foss and himself. Foss’ eclectic music underscores Rich’s funny and poignant journey to fatherhood. Searching for Mr. Moon is a play for anyone who has contemplated the mysteries of parenthood and mortality and curious about the lives of contemporary classical music icons and Broadway stars.

WARNING • Strobe effects and other intense lighting will be used during this show. It will not be safe for those with epilepsy and other conditions with sensitivity to light.

EFFECTIVE UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE

For all public performances – To enter the theater all patrons, front of house staff, and volunteer ushers must present either proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test with your ID and wear a mask regardless of vaccination status.
More info

Richard Topol - He is making his playwriting debut with Searching For Mr. Moon, and he thanks his co-writer Willy for the idea in the first place, and his patience and sense of humor along the way. As an actor he has previously appeared at Portland Stage in Loot and Scapin. He has performed on Broadway numerous times including as Lemml in the Tony Award winning production of Indecent, for which he was nominated for an Outer Critics Circle Award; with Larry David in Fish in the Dark; with Al Pacino in The Merchant of Venice; with Denzel Washington in Julius Caesar; with Mark Ruffalo in the Tony Award winning revival of Awake and Sing; with Joe Mantello in the Tony Award winning revival of The Normal Heart, and with Morgan Freeman and Frances McDormand in The Country Girl, directed by Mike Nichols. His off-Broadway appearances include productions at the Atlantic, Classic Stage Company, Playwrights Horizons, Manhattan Theatre Club, Lincoln Center, The Public, The Vineyard and Primary Stages. His film and TV credits include Lincoln, Indignation, Mickey Blue Eyes, Party Girl, Curb your Enthusiasm, The Blacklist, all the Law & Order series and recurring roles on Billions, Godfather of Harlem, Manifest, Genius: Einstein, The Practice, Perception, and many others. Richard has received two Drama Desk Awards, a Cullman award from Lincoln Center, and an Audelco Award. He holds an MFA in Acting from NYU and a BA in Political Science from Brown University.

Willy Holtzman - His The Morini Strad, Inside Out, and The Real McGonagall received full productions at Portland Stage Company. Sabina and The First Mrs. Rochester were developed at The Little Festival of the Unexpected. New York productions include The Morini Strad, Sabina, Something You Did, Bovver Boys (Primary Stages), Inside Out (Theater for a New Audience), San Antonio Sunset, The Last Temptation of Joe Hill, The Closer (The Working Theatre). His plays have been produced regionally at City Theatre, The Long Wharf Theater, Geva Theatre, Baltimore Center Stage, People’s Light, and Theater, Theatre J, Berkshire Theatre Festival, Cleveland Playhouse, The Colony Theater, Asolo Repertory Theatre, The Goodspeed Opera House, The Alliance Theatre, Northlight Theatre, and New York Stage and Film. He wrote and produced the Independent Film Edge of America for which he received the Peabody Award, the WGA Award, and The Humanitas Prize. He is a board member at New Dramatists and PlayPenn.

Julia Gibson (directorr) directed Greater Tuna at Portland Stage several years ago and is very happy to return! She has directed with Rattlestick, Barrow Street, Origin Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Source, and Epic Theatre Ensemble in New York City; and at Chautauqua Theater Company, Gulfshore Playhouse, New London Barn, Juilliard, NYU Graduate Acting, SMU in Dallas, The Actors Center Conservatory, A.C.T. Conservatory in San Francisco, Stony Brook University, and Stella Adler Conservatory. She was Associate Director of the revival of Angels in America at the Signature Theatre. As an actor, she has performed on and off Broadway and at major theaters across the US, as well as on TV and film. She is currently Co-Head of the Graduate Acting Program at UNC Chapel Hill where she also serves as a company member of PlayMakers Repertory Company. She received her MFA in Acting from New York University (alongside Richard Topol), is a founding member of The Actors Center in New York City and of the National Alliance for Acting Teachers; she is a Fox Fellowship recipient and has narrated over 160 audio books. Julia recently received a Carolina Women’s Center Faculty Scholarship grant to create a theater piece about women and aging.

Rich Richard Topol

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[*member Actors' Equity Association]

[**member United Scenic Artists]

[***member of Stage Directors and Choreographers Society]

Director Julia Gibson

Scenic Designer Anita Stewart**

Costume Designer Anita Stewart**

Light Designer Mari Yokoyama**

Sound Designer David Van Tieghem**

Projections Designer Michael Commendatore

Stage Manager Meg Lydon*

Show Gallery

SENIOR LIVING

DATES Jan 26 - Feb 13, 2022

RUN TIME tbd

PRICE In-Theater $20-$68 • Digital on Demand $25

PLAYWRIGHT Tor Hyams & Lisa St. Lou

WORLD PREMIERE

A play with music about people dying to live. At Riverdale Manor, a retirement community in the Bronx, seniors contemplate the possibility of dying from a broken heart, if divorce is even worth it at a certain age, and when is the right time to have sex again. A talent show, with the promise of cake for dessert, sets the scene for a series of life-changing vignettes that debate what to do with the time we have left.

Tor Hyams and Lisa St. Lou (Playwrights) Grammy nominated songwriter, Tor Hyams, and Broadway performer, Lisa St. Lou (The Producers) offer a unique blend of comedy and heart through musicals, plays and screenwriting. Original theater works include Stealing Time, where a woman struggles to reconcile her place in a failing marriage (premiered NYMF/2012); The Skylight Room, a collection of stories about lonely people searching for connection, with actor/writer, John Cariani; Howie D: Back in the Day, a family musical about belonging and race, based on the real-life experience of Backstreet Boy, Howie D (world premiere at The Rose Theatre – Omaha, NE January 2020); and Collateral Beauty, an adaptation of the film starring Will Smith (with screenwriter, Allan Loeb). Commissions include a musical adaptation of the legendary television show, Green Acres; Ensemble, a collection of previously unpublished letters by Tennessee Williams; Untitled, a “Golden Age” musical for middle and high school age students; and aTypical Family, a story about a family coping with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Tor & Lisa have adapted Senior Living into a 1/2 hour television show. Additional TV pilots include The Lou, the story of a singer/songwriter forced to return home and face her dysfunctional family in St. Louis; Animal Control, about an elite squad in Beaver County, OK who keep us safe from the animals and the animals safe from us; Clusterf*ck, the story of two forty-something’s who stop at nothing to “write” all the wrongs of life’s banalities; and The Whites, the story of a black family living in a wealthy, white suburb during the Obama years.

Lynn / Alice / Mary / Ellen Cynthia Barnett*

Angelina / Edith / Susan Grace Bauer*

Lily / Carol / Denise Beth Glover*

Morty / Richard / Paddy / Brobson / Lou Steve Vinovich*

Frank / Robert / Joe / Dr. Miller David Wohl*

[*member Actors' Equity Association]

Director Judith Ivy***

Scenic Designer David Goldstein**

Costume Designer Vanessa Leuck**

Lighting Designer SeifAllah Salotto-Cristobol

Sound Designer John Morrison

Stage Manager Meg Lydon*

[*member Actors Equity Association]

[**member United Scenic Artists]

[***member of Stage Directors and Choreographers Society]

Show Gallery

LAST SHIP TO PROXIMA CENTAURI (2022)

DATES Mar 2 - 20, 2022

RUN TIME tbd

PRICE In-Theater $20-$68 • Digital on Demand $25

PLAYWRIGHT Greg Lam

2021 Clauder Competition Winner

World Premiere

In futuristic sci-fi, planet Earth has become uninhabitable. The last escape ship from Earth arrives at its new home centuries after all the others. The pilots are not prepared for what they find there.

Greg Lam is a playwright, screenwriter, and board game designer who is a transplanted Bostonian now living in the Bay Area. He is the co-creator of the "Boston Podcast Players" podcast (bostonpodcastplayers.com) Boston's virtual podcast stage for new works by local playwrights. He is the co-founder of the Asian-American Playwright Collective and a member of The Pulp Stage Writer's Room.

Morris Emerson Tom Ford*

Adelaide "Addie" Russell Marcy McGuigan*

Henry Hirano Kennedy Kanagawa*

Tunde/Control 2 Jamal James*

Paz/Control 1 Octavia Chavez-Richmond*

[*member Actors' Equity Association]

Director Kevin R. Free

Scenic Design Germán Cárdenas-Alaminos

Costume Design Haydee Zelideth

Light Design Jamie Grant

Sound Design Seth Asa Sengel

Stage Manager Myles C. Hatch*

[*member Actors Equity Association]

Director, Kevin R. Free

Tom Ford (AEA)

Marcy McGuigan (AEA)

Kennedy Kanagawa (AEA)

Jamal James (AEA)

Octavia Chavez-Richmond (AEA)

I AND YOU

DATES Mar 30 - Apr 17, 2022

RUN TIME 90 Minutes, No Intermission

PRICE In-Theater $20-$68 • Digital on Demand $25

PLAYWRIGHT Lauren Gunderson

One afternoon, Anthony arrives unexpectedly at classmate Caroline’s door bearing a beat-up copy of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, an urgent assignment from their English teacher. Homebound due to illness, Caroline hasn’t been to school in months, but she is as quick and sardonic as Anthony is athletic, sensitive, and popular. As these two let down their guards and share their secrets, this seemingly mundane poetry project unlocks a much deeper mystery that has brought them together.
I and You is an ode to youth, life, love, and the strange beauty of human connectedness.

Warning! There are moments of intense flashing/strobe lights that may be unsafe for patrons with eplilepsy or light sensitivy. • Theatrical haze is used in the production.

Anthony Pascal Arquimedes*

Caroline Sarah Lord*

•

[*member Actors' Equity Association]

[**member United Scenic Artists]

Director Cait Robinson

Scenic Design Riw Rakkulchon**

Costume Design Fabian Fidel Aguilar**

Light Design Molly Tiede**

Sound Design Kathy Ruvuna

Stage Manager Meg Lydon*

Show Gallery

Carl Jung’s patient & lover, Sabina Spielrein, pioneered the movement that changed psychology. Finally her story will be told.

SABINA

DATES May 4 - May 22, 2022

RUN TIME Approximately 2 hours & 15 minutes, including intermission. There will be no concessions at this performance.

PRICE In-Theater $20-$68 • Digital on Demand $25

PLAYWRIGHT WIlly Holtzman

MUSIC & LYRICS Louise Beach & Darrah Cloud

DIRECTOR Danilo Gambini & Daniella Topol

From celebrated Maine playwright Willy Holtzman, comes a new musical, Sabina. From Carl Jung’s patient, to lover, to student, Sabina pioneered the feminist movement that changed psychoanalysis forever and brought Jung and Freud together. Nearly forgotten to history, her story will be sung.

The turbulent relationship between Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud is well-known. But the story of Sabina Spielrein – Jung’s patient, protege, and lover – was nearly lost to history. Sabina introduced him to an inner world of archetype and shadow that became the foundation of Jungian psychology. She later brought Jung and Freud together and, in many ways, surpassed them as a pioneering feminist psychoanalyst who was the hero of her own story.

Willy Holtzman The Morini Strad, Inside Out, and The Real McGonagall received full productions at Portland Stage Company. Sabina and The First Mrs. Rochester were developed at The Little Festival of the Unexpected. New York productions include The Morini Strad, Sabina, Something You Did, Bovver Boys (Primary Stages), Inside Out (Theater for a New Audience), San Antonio Sunset, The Last Temptation of Joe Hill, The Closer (The Working Theatre). His plays have been produced regionally at City Theatre, The Long Wharf Theater, Geva Theatre, Baltimore Center Stage, People’s Light, and Theater, Theatre J, Berkshire Theatre Festival, Cleveland Playhouse, The Colony Theater, Asolo Repertory Theatre, The Goodspeed Opera House, The Alliance Theatre, Northlight Theatre, and New York Stage and Film. He wrote and produced the Independent Film Edge of America for which he received the Peabody Award, the WGA Award, and The Humanitas Prize. He is a board member at New Dramatists and PlayPenn.

Louise Beach writes music for the concert stage as well as for the theater, and her chamber works are widely performed. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for her musical adaptation of Sabina and won the National Art Song Competition for her Songs of Dusk. With a Masters in Composition from Purchase Conservatory, she was a composer in the New Dramatists Composer-Librettist Studio and a long-time member of the Advanced Class of the BMI-Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop, where Sabina was developed alongside shows such as Avenue Q and Next to Normal.

Darrah Cloud’s full-length play, TURNING, premieres in March 2020 at Centenary Stage in NJ. OUR SUBURB premiered at Theater J in Washington, DC in 2014. JOAN THE GIRL OF ARC premiered at Cincinnati Playhouse in January 2014, then toured. Other plays produced in New York, Europe and across the U.S. include WHAT’S BUGGING GREG?, THE STICK WIFE, THE MUD ANGEL, DREAM HOUSE, BRAILLE GARDEN, and THE SIRENS. Her produced musicals, written with composer Kim D. Sherman, include HEARTLAND, (Madison Repertory Theatre, The Majestic Theatre in Dallas, TheatreWorks Palo Alto) THE BOXCAR CHILDREN (Theatreworks USA, tour), HONOR SONG FOR CRAZY HORSE (TheatreWorks Palo Alto) and the stage adaptation of Willa Cather’s O PIONEERS!, which has received over 100 productions in the United States and was filmed starring Mary McDonnell for American Playhouse. She has won numerous awards, including the Macy’s Prize for Theatre for Young Audiences, an NEA and a Rockefeller. She has had over 10 movies-of-the-week produced on CBS and NBC, is a proud alum of the Iowa Writers Workshop and New Dramatists, and co-directs Howl Playwrights in Rhinebeck, NY. She is the Town Supervisor of Pine Plains, NY.

Carl Jung Philip Stoddard*

Sabina Spielrein Stephanie Machado*

Ludwig Binswanger Jason Michael Evans*

Emma Jung Sarah Anne Fernandez*

Sigmund Freud Bruce Sabath*

•

[*member Actors' Equity Association]

[**member United Scenic Artists]

[***member of Stage Directors and Choreographers Society]

Co-Director Co-Director

Co-Director Daniella Topol***

Musical DIrector Bradley Vieth

Scenic Designer Anita Stewart**

Costume Designer Fabian Fidel Aguilar**

Lighting Designer Christopher Akerlind**

Sound Designer Charles Coes**

Stage Manager Myles C. Hatch*

Danilo Gambini

Daniella Topol (SDC)

Philip Stoddard (AEA)

Stephanie Machado (AEA)

Jason Michael Evans (AEA)

Sarah Anne Fernandez (AEA)

Bruce Sabath (AEA)

Show Gallery

Sweet Goats & Blueberry Señoritas (2022)

PLAYWRIGHT Richard Blanco and Vanessa Garcia

Beatriz, a Cuban-American baker in Maine, tries to figure out whether she should stay in Maine with the community she’s developed, or reunite with her estranged mother in Miami. Along the way Beatriz explores what it means to belong as she cooks up the recipes of her childhood with the raw ingredients of Maine. This is a Maine Made Play commissioned by Portland Stage.

Due contractual limitations, the video recording of Sweet Goats & Blueberry Señoritas by Richard Blanco and Vanessa Garcia is no longer available .

CLICK HERE To make a Donation to support New Works like the Little Festival of the Unexpected

Little Festival of the Unexpected (LFU) furnishes a supportive environment for playwrights to develop their work and offers audiences a unique opportunity to witness the creative process that usher scripts to the stage. LFU readings are performed by a company of professional actors and are followed by an open discussion with the audience, director, and playwright.

Following each digital workshop performance, there will be a talkback with the writer, director, and cast of the show.

Each presentation will be free and open to the public. Registration is required.

During the weekend following each performance, a recording of that week’s reading will be hosted on Portland Stage’s website.

Richard Blanco (Playwright) was born in Madrid, his family had recently arrived as exiles from Cuba. Forty-five days later, the family immigrated once more to New York City, and eventually settled in Miami. Only a few weeks old, Blanco already belonged to three countries, a foreshadowing of the negotiations of cultural identity, community, and belonging that would shape his life and continue to inform his work. As a poet, memoirist, and essayist, Blanco is a sought-after speaker who captivates audiences around the nation and the world with his dynamic storytelling and powerful readings. Advocating for diversity, LGBTQ rights, immigration, arts education, cultural exchange, and other important issues of our time, Blanco routinely speaks at a variety of venues and functions, including fundraisers and galas, professional development conferences, middle and high schools, universities, commencement ceremonies, writing conferences, and literary festivals. In 2013, Blanco was selected by President Obama as the fifth inaugural poet in U.S. history. He stands as the first Latino, immigrant, and gay person to serve in such a role. His latest book of poems, How to Love a Country (Beacon Press, 2019), both interrogates the American narrative, past and present, and celebrates the still unkept promise of its ideals. The Academy of American Poets chose Blanco to serve as its first Education Ambassador. He has also served as artist-in-residence at Colby College, and has taught at Georgetown University, Wesleyan University, American University, and many literary centers throughout the country. A builder of cities as well as poems, Blanco holds degrees in civil engineering and creative writing from Florida International University. In addition, he has received honorary doctorates from Macalester College, the University of Rhode Island, the University of Southern Maine, and Colby College.

Vanessa Garcia (Playwright) is a multidisciplinary writer and creator working as a screenwriter, novelist, playwright, and journalist. She has written for Sesame Street, Caillou, and is a consultant on Dora the Explorer. Her debut novel, White Light, was published in 2015, to critical acclaim. Named one of the Best Books of 2015 by NPR, it also won an International Latino Book Award. Her plays have been produced in Edinburgh, Miami, Amsterdam, Los Angeles, New York, and other cities around the world. These include the immersive hit, Amparo(“Miami’s Hottest Ticket,” according to People en Español); The Cuban Spring (a full-length Carbonell Award nominee for Best New Play, 2015), The Crocodile’s Bite (a short included in numerous anthologies such as Smith & Kraus’ Best Ten Minute Plays of 2016; the City Theatre Anthology 2015; and the Writer’s Digest Annual Award Anthology, 2015), and Freek!,a short play for Young Adults (anthologized in The Applause Acting Series’ 5 Minute Plays For Teens). As a journalist, feature writer, and essayist, her pieces have appeared in The LA Times, The Miami Herald, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Narrative.ly, American Theatre Magazine, The Huffington Post, ESPN, and numerous other publications. She holds a PhD from the University of California Irvine in English (with a focus in Creative Nonfiction), an MFA from the University of Miami (in fiction), and a BA from Barnard College, Columbia University (English and Art History). Her newly commissioned and autobiographical radio play, Ich Bin Ein Berliner about the fall of the Berlin Wall and her relationship to Cuba premiers in April of 2021.

Tio Eme Emiliano Diez*

Beatriz Vanessa Elise+

Maynard Paul Haley

Georgette Kathy McCafferty*

Marilyn Martica De Cardenas*

Blake Dustin Tucker*

Director Sally Wood

Assistant Directer and Dramaturg Macey Downs

•

[*member Actors Equity Association]

[+Equity Membership Candidate]

Sally Wood, Director

Macey Downs

Emiliano Diez (AEA)

Vanessa Elise (EMC)

Paul Haley

Kathy McCafferty (AEA)

Martica DeCardenas

Dustin Tucker (AEA)

Madeleines (2022)

PLAYWRIGHT Bess Welden

Spiced with poetry and smatterings of Yiddish and Spanish, Madeleines tells the story of a family of Jewish women grappling with how to love each other through haunted pasts, shared grief, and the solace of baking together.

Following each digital workshop performance, there will be a talkback with the writer, director, and cast of the show.

Due contractual limitations, the video recording of Madeleines by Bess Whelden is no longer available.

CLICK HERE To make a Donation to support New Works like the Little Festival of the Unexpected.

Bess Welden (Playwright) is a theater-maker living and working in Portland, Maine, and longtime Portland Stage Affiliate Artist. She is a 2021-22 National Arts Strategies Creative Community Fellow – New England. Her play Madeleines is a finalist for the 2022 National Jewish Playwriting Contest (Jewish Plays Project, NYC) as well as for the 2021 Bay Area Playwrights Festival. Death Wings, her play with songs, won the 2020 Maine State prize of the Clauder Competition for New England Playwrights, was a semi-finalist for the 2020 O’Neill New Play Conference, and was workshopped with Fresh Ink Theatre at Boston Center for the Arts. Death Wings will premiere in multiple Maine locations in spring 2023 with support from the Maine Arts Commission and New England Foundation for the Arts. Her play Refuge Malja, winner of the 2020 Tel Aviv Jewish Plays Contest and a finalist in the 2020 National Jewish Playwriting Contest, premiered on Portland Stage’s mainstage in 2018. Her youth theater script, Magic in the Attic, has been produced around the country and Mergirl Saves the Waves, Bess’ feminist, environmentalist adaptation of The Little Mermaid, is in development with A Company of Girls. Her solo comedies The Passion of the Hausfrau (2009) and Big Mouth Thunder Thighs (2013) premiered in Portland Stage’s Studio Theater, and her collaborative play-project with live music and illustration, Legbala is a River, premiered at Mayo Street Arts (2017). In 2020 she participated as an invited writer at the National Winter Playwrights Retreat in Grand Lake, CO and was a member of Company One Theatre (Boston) PlayLab Unit. besswelden.com

Jennifer Kate Levy*

Debra Abigail Killeen*

Rose/Lilia Deborah Paley

Director Annette Jolles**

Assistant Directer and Dramaturg Meredith G. Healy

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[*member Actors' Equity Association]

[***Stage Directors and Choreographers Society]

Annette Jolles (SDC)

Meredith Healy

Kate Levy (AEA)

Abigail Kileen (AEA)

Deborah Paley

Riverbank

PLAYWRIGHT Brendan Pelsue

Every spring, Paul takes his mother Ruth for an afternoon of bird watching. As Ruth slips into dementia, this year’s trip becomes a journey to the elusive limits of memory and identity. With the past and the present colliding, Ruth and Paul must question not only what she knows, but who she is when she no longer knows.

Due contractual limitations, the video recording of Riverbank by Brendan Pelsue is no longer available.

CLICK HERE To make a Donation to support New Works like the Little Festival of the Unexpected.

Brendan Pelsue (Playwright) is a playwright, librettist, and translator whose work has been produced in New York and regionally. His play Wellesley Girl premiered at the Humana Festival of New American Plays. Hagoromo, a dance-opera for which he wrote the libretto, appeared at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Pocantico Center, and was first-round ballot nominee for a Grammy Award. Recent projects include a new translation and adaptation of Molière’s Don Juan at Westport Country Playhouse, and Read to Me at Portland Stage, which won the 2019 Clauder Prize. He is currently working on One Thousand Years of Sacred Music and Two Americans, a chamber opera, for Theater Emory, as well as a new adaptation of Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities for The Alliance. Commissions include South Coast Repertory, American Opera Projects, Westport Country Playhouse, and the Actors Theatre of Louisville. He was a 2017 artist-in-residence at Château de la Napoule, France, where he produced the podcast We Are Not These People. Originally from Newburyport, MA, he received his MFA from the Yale School of Drama and his BA from Brown University, where he received the Weston Prize in playwriting. He teaches at Rutgers University.

Director

Macey Downs

Benjamin Anthony Anderson (AEA)

Tom Ford (AEA)

Penny Fuller (AEA)

Neil/Chorus Benjamin Anthony Anderson*

Paul Tom Ford*

Ruth Penny Fuller*

Director Rory Pelsue

Assistant Directer and Dramaturg Macey Downs

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[*member Actors' Equity Association]

Too Strange to Live, Too Weird to Die - A Staged Reading Series presents

The Zero Hour

PRICE $10 online $15 at the door

PLAYWRIGHT Madeleine George

DIRECTOR Todd Brian Backus

Too Strange to Live, Too Weird to Die is back!
This reading series, curated by Literary Manager Todd Brian Backus, features beautiful and bizarre plays that stretch the limits of the theatrical imagination.

“They want me to put word scrambles in the Auschwitz Unit…” Things are starting to unravel for Rebecca and her chronically unemployed butch girlfriend, O. Rebecca’s work starts bleeding into her personal life as she starts meeting World War II Nazis on the 7 train, passing as hipsters. While O is also sparring with visions of her long estranged—and recently dead?—mother to argue with her about her choices. This almost-love story explores the relationship between honesty and cruelty: How do you tell the truth about yourself when that truth might devastate the people you love? A tour-de-force for two actors playing eight different roles.

Funded in part by a grant from
the Maine Arts Commission.

Featuring: Catherine Buxton and Lauren Stockless.

Madeleine George (Playwright) Madeleine George’s plays include Hurricane Diane (Obie Award), The (curious case of the) Watson Intelligence (Pulitzer Prize finalist; Outer Critics Circle John Gassner Award), Seven Homeless Mammoths Wander New England (Susan Smith Blackburn finalist), Precious Little, and The Zero Hour (Jane Chambers Award, Lambda Literary Award finalist). Honors include a Whiting Award, the Princess Grace Award, and a Lilly Award.

Madeleine’s translation of Chekhov’s Three Sisters is set to premiere at Two River Theater in 2022, and her audio adaptation of Alison Bechdel’s comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For is forthcoming from Audible Originals. Madeleine is a founding member of the Obie-Award-winning playwrights' collective 13P (www.13p.org), the Mellon Playwright in Residence at Two River Theater, and a writer on the Hulu mystery-comedy Only Murders in the Building. Since 2006, she has worked with the Bard Prison Initiative at Bard College, where she currently serves as Director of Admissions.

Todd Brian Backus (Director) is a new works director, dramaturg, illustrator, and literary manager based in Portland, Maine. He likes to work on "weird theatre" by which he means: Sci-fi plays about absentee voting, Chekhovian cavemen plays, time-traveling gentrification musicals for kids, and plays that combine poetry, swordplay, and ghosts. He's hoping this series will get more people interested in plays outside the living room. Todd is a co-producer of Dungeons + Drama Nerds, a podcast that explores the intersection of theatre and tabletop roleplaying games, a co-founder and Artistic Producer with PowerOut, and a co-founder and producer of Hot Pepper Theater. Find him just about everywhere @tbbackus.

Rebecca Catherine Buxton

O Lauren Stockless

Director Todd Brian Backus

Assistant Director Meredith G. Healy

Too Strange to Live, Too Weird to Die - A Staged Reading Series presents

A Beautiful Day in November on the Banks of the Greatest of the Great Lakes

PRICE $10 online $15 at the door

PLAYWRIGHT Kate Benson

DIRECTOR Todd Brian Backus

“For those of you just tuning in, Thanksgiving is already in progress here at Wembly kitchen. The stands are nice and full, it’s quite a crowd that’s gathered. They’re in for a real treat.” As the lights go up on A Beautiful Day in November on the Banks of the Greatest of the Great Lakes we’re greeted by the dulcet tones of sports commentators as an all-American family gets ready for the original bloodsport, Thanksgiving Dinner.

Funded in part by a grant from
the Maine Arts Commission.

Featuring: Grace Bauer*, Sarabeth Connelly, Kim Gordon, James Herrera, Jared Mongeau, Erica Murphy, James Patefield, Nathan Sylvester, Tess Van Horn, and Maya Williams.

Kate Benson (Playwright) Kate Benson is a writer and actor living in Brooklyn. Her plays include A Beautiful Day in November on the Banks of the Greatest of the Great Lakes, produced by New Georges in 2014, [PORTO], Lee Miller, and Radium Now. She is a member of the Jam at New Georges, and she is a graduate of the Brooklyn College MFA Playwriting program. She has had readings and showings of her work at Dixon Place, 13th St. Theater, Jimmy’s No. 43, and the Room at New Georges. As an actor, she has appeared at the Public, NYTW, the Flea, PS 122, the Incubator, and LaMama.