Thornton Niven Wilder (1897-1975) Born in Madison, Wisconsin, and educated at Oberlin, Yale (B.A. 1920) and Princeton (M.A. 1925), Thornton Wilder was an accomplished novelist and playwright whose works, exploring the connection between the commonplace and the cosmic dimensions of human experience, continue to be read and produced around the world. Wilder is the only writer to win Pulitzer Prizes for both fiction and drama—for his novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927) and two plays, Our Town (1938) and The Skin of Our Teeth (1942). His other novels include The Cabala, The Woman of Andros, Heaven’s My Destination, The Ides of March, The Eighth Day, and Theophilus North. His other major dramas include The Matchmaker (adapted as the musical Hello, Dolly!) and The Alcestiad. The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden, The Long Christmas Dinner, and Pullman Car Hiawatha are among his celebrated shorter plays. Wilder also enjoyed success as an essayist, translator, research scholar, teacher, lecturer, actor, librettist and screenwriter.  His screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt (1943) remains a classic psycho-thriller to this day.  Wilder's many honors include the Gold Medal for Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Book Committee's Medal for Literature, The Order of Merit (Peru), and the Goethe-Plakette (Germany). In 1930, with royalties received from The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Wilder built a home for himself and his family in Hamden, CT. Although often away from it for as many as 250 days a year, restlessly seeking quiet places in which to write, Thornton Wilder always returned to “The House The Bridge Built.” He died here on December 7th, 1975.

More information on Thornton Wilder and his family is available in Penelope Niven’s definitive biography, Thornton Wilder: A Life (2013) as well as on the Wilder Family website, www.thorntonwilder.com

Maggie Kearnan (Playwright, she/her) is a Boston-based playwright, and member of the Boston University MFA playwriting class of 2025. Her plays have been produced at Boston College, Newton Theater Company, and the Boston Theater Marathon. Maggie is also a director, performer, educator, and scenic artist with a small TikTok following, sharing tips for painting theatrical sets for theater educators with limited resources. Her dark political satire How to Not Save the World with Mr. Bezos was produced in the Boston Playwrights' Theatre Fall Rep Festival in November 2024, and opened the 2025 summer season at Great Barrington Public Theater.

Ken Ludwig has had six productions on Broadway and eight in London’s West End. His 34 plays and musicals are staged around the world and throughout the United States every night of the year.

His first play, Lend Me a Tenor, won two Tony Awards and was called “one of the classic comedies of the 20th century” by The Washington Post. Crazy For You is currently running on London’s West End. It was previously on Broadway for five years, on the West End for three, and won the Tony and Olivier Awards for Best Musical.

In addition, he has won the Edwin Forrest Award for Contributions to the American Theatre, two Laurence Olivier Awards, two Helen Hayes Awards, the Charles MacArthur Award and the Edgar Award for Best Mystery of the Year. His other plays include Moon Over Buffalo, Leading Ladies, Baskerville, Sherwood, Twentieth Century, Dear Jack, Dear Louise, A Fox on the Fairway, A Comedy of Tenors, The Game’s Afoot, Shakespeare in Hollywood and Murder on the Orient Express. They have starred, among others, Alec Baldwin, Carol Burnett, Kristen Bell, Tony Shaloub, Joan Collins and Henry Goodman.

His book How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare, published by Penguin Random House, won the Falstaff Award for Best Shakespeare Book of the Year, and his essays on theatre are published in the Yale Review. He gives the Annual Ken Ludwig Playwriting Scholarship at the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival, and he served on the Board of Governors for the Folger Shakespeare Library for ten years. His first opera, Tenor Overboard, opened at the Glimmerglass Festival in July 2022. His most recent world premieres were Lend Me A Soprano and Moriarty, and his newest plays and musicals include Pride and Prejudice Part 2: Napoleon at Pemberley and Lady Molly of Scotland Yard.

His plays include commissions from the Agatha Christie Estate, the Royal Shakespeare Company, The Old Globe Theatre, and the Bristol Old Vic. For more information visit www.kenludwig.com.

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* Member, Actor's Equity Association

Director Kevin R. Free ***

Scenic Designer German Cárdenas Alaminos

Costume Designer Jacqueline Firkins **

Lighting Designer Mary Lana Rice

Sound Designer Seth Asa Sengel

Projection Designer tbd

Stage Manager Myles C. Hatch *

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** Member, United Scenic Artists

*** Member, Stage Directors and Choreographers Society

CHARLES DICKENS (1812-1870) was born into a middle-class family, but his father’s financial troubles landed the family in debtors’ prison. With the rest of his family imprisoned, the then 12-year-old Dickens was sent daily to a blacking factory where he tied and labeled tins of shoe polish. Though he returned to school the next year, his factory experience left a deep impression on the young man, who would return again and again to themes of poverty and social injustice in his novels.

Dickens worked first as a clerk, then as a journalist, developing a keen eye for detail and a passion for observing and recording the world around him. In 1836 he published his first work, Sketches by Boz, a collection of stories about Londoners. Dickens was then hired to write The Pickwick Papers, which began to appear later that year and were an overnight success across England. Dickens’s popularity as a writer was almost immediate, and he soon attained celebrity status in Victorian London.

Over the career that followed he was astoundingly prolific, producing novels at a nearly uninterrupted pace for 35 years. His works include Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Hard Times, A Tale of Two Cities, and Great Expectations. A Christmas Carol was published in 1843, released just in time for the holidays. It was to become one of Dickens’s best-loved stories. Dickens died in 1870 after suffering a stroke while writing Th e Mystery of

Edwin Drood, which remained unfinished. He was buried in Westminster Abbey after a three-day processional of mourners. A writer who captured the public imagination at the same time that he criticized social ills, Dickens was, as the London Times wrote, a writer “of the people and for the people.”

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* Member, Actor's Equity Association

Director Michael Dix Thomas

Scenic Designer Anita Stewart **

Costume Coordinator Kathleen Payton Brown

Lighting Designer Bryon Winn **

Sound Designer Seth Asa Sengel

Stage Manager Myles C. Hatch *

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** Member, United Scenic Artists

Brent Askari is the winner of the National New Play Network’s Smith Prize for Political Theater for his play The Refugees, which was produced at Gulfshore Playhouse in 2024. Barrington Stage Company commissioned his play Andy Warhol In Iran, producing its world premiere in 2022; the play won Berkshire Theater Critics Award for Best New Play of the season. It has since been produced at Chicago’s Northlight Theatre, City Theatre of Pittsburgh, and Mosaic Theatre in Washington, DC. Other produced plays include American Underground (Barrington Stage Company), Hard Cell (Geva Theatre Center), Cocktails and Travails (Winner of Neil Simon Festival’s National New Play Contest and produced at The Theater Project); Dirty Deeds Downeast (Penobscot Theatre Company).His play Advice is part of a National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere, with productions at Florida Studio Theatre in Sarasota, B Street Theatre in Sacramento, and Florida Repertory Theatre in Fort Myers. Brent was part of HBO’s New Writers Project and has written screenplays for companies including Paramount Pictures, Marvel Films, and MTV. Brent is a National New Play Network affiliate artist and a member of Mad Horse Theatre Company. Brent thanks his wife Reba and daughter Yasmine.

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* Member, Actor's Equity Association

** Member, United Scenic Artists

Director Skip Greer

Scenic Designer Anita Stewart **

Costume Designer Kathleen Payton Brown

Lighting Designer Ken Smith

Sound Designer Seth Asa Sengel

Stage Manager tba

Mark St. Germain has written the plays Freud's Last Session (Off Broadway Alliance Award), Camping with Henry and Tom (Outer Critics Circle Award and Lucille Lortel Award) Forgiving Typhoid Mary, (Time Magazine’s “Year’s Ten Best”) and Becoming Dr. Ruth, the story of Dr. Ruth Westheimer. He also wrote the play, Best of Enemies (adapted from the novel by Osha Gray Davidson), Ears on a Beatle, Scott and Hem and Out of Gas on Lover's Leap.

His play Relativity, starred Richard Dreyfuss at Theaterworks in Hartford and Mike Nussbaum at Northlight, in Chicago and broke both theaters’ box office records. It was selected for the National New Play Network Rolling World Premieres award and produced across the country.

In 2019 Mark’s adaptation of John Updike’s novel Gertrude and Claudius premiered in repertory with Hamlet at the Orlando Shakespeare Festival and was presented this at Barrington Stage Company in the Berkshires. A second premiere was Wednesday's Child at the Florida Studio Theatre in Sarasota.

With Randy Courts, he has written the musicals The Gifts of the Magi, Johnny Pye and the Foolkiller, Award” (Lamb’s Theater) and Jack's Holiday. Mark’s musical, Stand by Your Man, The Tammy Wynette Story was created for Nashville’s Ryman Theater (under option for touring). With John Markus wrote the comedy with music, The Fabulous Lipitones.

Mark co-wrote the screenplay for Carroll Ballard’s Warner Brothers film, Duma. He directed and produced the documentary, My Dog, An Unconditional Love Story, featuring Richard Gere, and Glenn Close among others. Television credits include The Cosby Show and for Dick Wolf’s Crime and Punishment. He wrote the award winning children’s book Three Cups and is a member of the Dramatists Guild, the Writer’s Guild East and an Associate Artist at the Barrington Stage Company. In 2010, Barrington Stage named their second stage “The St. Germain Stage.”

Eleanor Roosevelt Kandis Chappell *

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* Member, Actor's Equity Association

** Member, United Scenic Artists

*** Member, Stage Directors and Choreographers Society

Director David Ellenstein ***

Scenic Designer Anita Stewart **

Costume Designer Anita Stewart **

Lighting Designer Mary Lana Rice

Sound Designer Seth Asa Sengel

Stager Manager Myles C. Hatch *

Joe Kinosian (Book and Music) Joe is the composer and co-bookwriter (with lyricist Kellen Blair) of Murder for Two, which he’s also performed in over 700 times. Murder for Two had its world premiere at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, receiving the Joseph Jefferson Award for Best New Musical and earning Joe a nomination for Best Leading Actor, before going on to an acclaimed off-Broadway run, where it earned Drama Desk, Drama League, and Outer Critics Circle Award nominations. A two-year national tour and well-received productions in Japan, China, Korea, England, Chile, and Argentina followed. Joe’s work with Kellen has been showcased at The Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, and on Broadway at the Theatre World Awards, and their new backstage musical/farce is currently in development at Second Stage Theater. In addition, Joe (with Marcus Stevens) adapted the children’s book Dragons Love Tacos into a successful touring musical. Joe is the recipient of the ASCAP Foundation Mary Rodgers/Lorenz Hart Award, selected and presented by Stephen Schwartz, and the Harrington Award from the BMI Workshop. His acting credits include Dear Edwina (off-Broadway), as well as regional productions of Dirty Blonde with Emily Skinner, An Act of God, and the title role in The Nerd. kinosianandblair.com

Kellen Blair (Book and Lyrics) is the Drama Desk nominated co-creator of Murder for Two, the  murder mystery musical comedy that ran for a year off-Broadway and has been continuously produced across the United States and internationally since 2014. The show earned Kellen (and co-writer Joe Kinosian) the Joseph Jefferson Award for Best New Musical Work in Chicago and the ASCAP Foundation Mary Rodgers / Lorenz Hart Award for their contribution to musical theatre. Kellen’s lyrics have been heard on Broadway stages (at the Theatre World Awards), at the Kennedy Center, and in theatres across the country. His other musical works include Scrooge in Love (available to license through Tams-Witmark), Just Between the All of Us (an immersive musical comedy commissioned by Pittsburgh CLO), and Diane Steals the Show (being developed with Second Stage Theatre). In addition to writing for the theater, Kellen enjoys writing fiction and poetry. He teaches film and playwriting in New York City, where he lives with his wife and young son. kinosianandblair.com

Marcus Joe Bliss

The Suspects Robbie Harrison

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* Member, Actor's Equity Association

** Member, United Scenic Artists

Director Melanie Keller

Music Director Nicolás Guerrero

Scenic Designer Anita Stewart**

Costume Designer Mark Reynolds

Lighting Designer Mary Lana Rice

Sound Designer Seth Asa Sengel

Stage Manager Meg Lydon*