Great Barrington — As of press time, Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos has a net worth of approximately $220 billion.
Having founded online shopping website Amazon in 1994 and purchased The Washington Post newspaper in 2013, he is one of the three richest men in the world. He is now featured as a character in Great Barrington Public Theater’s first production of the season, “How to Not Save the World with Mr. Bezos.”
Performances will open on June 5 at the Daniel Arts Center, located at the former Bard College at Simon’s Rock campus.
The satirical play, written by Maggie Kearnan and directed by Clay Hopper, includes three characters: Noah Alexis Tuleja as Bezos, Eliza Fichter as journalist Cherry Beaumont, and Shai Vaknine as The Fact Checker.
“I started writing this play in the fall of 2023, and I was thinking about wealth disparity,” Kearnan told The Berkshire Edge. “I have a daily guilt that I feel because I know I have access to things that other people in the world don’t have access to. I was wondering why I felt that way, and yet billionaires don’t feel that way.”
Kearnan explained that the play started as a conversation between her and Bezos. “There are, at least, seven facts in the play that will get updated every night,” Kearnan said. “It’s my goal with this production to get the script in a place where I don’t have to be around to update certain things in place.”
The satiric play explores the ethics of being a billionaire, with Beaumont questioning Bezos throughout the play. “In the world of the play, there is a piece of legislation called the ‘Billionaire Busting Memorial Bernie Bill,’” she said. “In the world of the play, Senator Bernie Sanders is no longer with us, and this bill has been created in his memory. It is now illegal to be a billionaire, and the highest level of wealth you can have is $999 million. Everything over that is forfeited to the federal government.”
In the story, Bezos meets with journalist Cherry Beaumont to discuss his response to the “Bernie Bill” in exchange for information that she has acquired about the federal case against him. “There’s three separate worlds that are happening concurrently in the play,” Kearnan said. “There’s the world of Bezos and Cherry Beaumont, the fictional world of the Bernie Bill and where wealth hoarding is illegal. And then there’s the world of the Fact Checker and the audience. The Fact Checker is aware of the audience and is aware of 2025 and this moment right now. All three of these worlds interact with the play.”
“The play is less about the verisimilitude of the nonfictional character of Jeff Bezos and more about the drama playing out about how to ethically solve income disparity,” Clay said. “The moral dilemma of the play is: How far is one willing to go or is one ethically capable of going to rectify that disparity?”
“I would say this is probably the most contemporary of contemporary plays I have ever worked on,” Hopper said. “One of the things that I find so timely about the play is that at this current moment in our nation’s history, we have class warfare happening. It’s happening in the courts, it’s happening in the government, and it’s happening in the voting booth. I think that this ethical dilemma that the play sort of explicates is happening on some level with every single person in this country on a moment-to-moment basis.”
“No matter what side of the class divide you find yourself on, you’re going to find a person in this play who you can relate to,” Hopper said. Kearnan adds “This play doesn’t offer answers. The world of the play isn’t necessarily the solution, and that’s the point of writing the play is because I don’t have an answer, and that these are like complicated ideas, and there is no simple solution. People are complicated, and feelings get in the way.”
When Kearnan and Clay were asked what they would say to Bezos if they could talk to him, Clay said: “Don’t sue us.”
For more information about “How Not to Save the World With Mr. Bezos” including ticket information and showtimes, visit Great Barrington Public Theater’s website.
