Great Barrington — Great Barrington Public Theater (GBPT) will start its sixth season this June.
According to its website, GBPT’s mission is to create opportunities for theater lovers and artists in Berkshire County. Through its performances and programs, GBPT has put the spotlight on Berkshire County-based actors, directors, designers, and playwrights.
Through the years, GBPT has featured plays and performances that tackle topical subjects, and this season’s lineup will not shy away from the pressing needs of our time.
This year’s season starts with the play “How to Not Save the World With Mr. Bezos.” In the fictional play, Mr. Bezos is based on Jeff Bezos, the controversial founder of Amazon and owner of The Washington Post.
As per the play’s description, the story takes place in an alternative world where:
It’s illegal to be a billionaire, and Jeffrey Bezos has agreed to give an interview in exchange for information on the federal case against him. But there’s something off about journalist Cherry Beaumont, a crowd is forming outside, and the onstage Fact Checker has a few important clarifications to make. The fall of capitalism is about to get very messy.
The play, which will run from June 5 to June 22, was written by Boston-based playwright Maggie Kearnan and will be directed by Boston University’s College of Fine Arts Senior Lecturer Clay Hopper.
“This play is all about the reality of the moment,” GBPT Artistic Director Jim Frangione told The Berkshire Edge. “It has a lot of topical and contemporary references. It’s a funny satire that turns deadly serious at the end.”
“We saw the script before the current eruptions and ridiculous [political] situations that have continued to evolve over the winter,” said Associate Artistic Director Judy Braha. “We are all in terrible situations, but this play came to us at a good time.”
According to her website, Kearnan writes plays that “are usually lyrical historical fiction, angsty dystopian thrillers, or naturalistic explorations of friendship and art.”
“Maggie is a young, scrappy, intelligent, and very angry young person,” Braha said. “She created this world where it’s illegal to be a billionaire. I think it’s a very clever premise.”
The second play in GBPT’s season is Anne Undeland’s “Madame Mozart, the Lacrimosa,” directed by Braha. Undeland is a theater artist based in Berkshire County with numerous credits and has worked with Shakespeare & Company, Berkshire Playwrights Lab, Ventfort Hall, and other stage companies.
GBPT describes the play as follows:
Constanze Mozart, wife of the great composer, struggles mightily in the wake of his too-early death in 1791 — to feed her children, to survive her own shattering grief, and to secure her husband’s astonishing musical legacy by completing his great unfinished masterwork, the Requiem in D Minor. With the odds and the whole of patriarchy working against her, the perennially-underestimated Constanze Mozart digs deep to find a way to not only prevail but to triumph — in the end, she’s the last woman standing, smarter and braver than everyone else in her story.
“This is the first play we’ve commissioned from Anne, and we’re excited because she’s been developing this play for over two years,” said Braha. “Despite the play taking place in 1791, the [show] concerns contemporary female dilemmas: a widow suddenly finding herself with debts to pay, children to support, and not allowed to work or have access to ways she could make a living. It’s a situation women find themselves in when they lose a partner. Suddenly, many of them are homeless and are not able to live in the fashion that they were accustomed to.”
The final play in this season’s lineup is “The Best Medicine,” written by Robin Gerber and directed by Matthew Penn. Gerber previously wrote the GBPT production “The Shot,” and Penn directed last year’s “Survival of the Unfit.”
In a press release, GBPT describes the play as follows:
The Best Medicine is a world-premiere of Gerber’s latest work that is based on her own personal experiences with caregiving and the realities of aging, while finding comfort in perhaps an atypical way. In this hilarious and poignant play, a stand-up comedy class becomes a salvation and a portal to a transforming truth about life and love.
“The main character in the play is reaching a certain age, and she is caring for her husband who has a terminal illness,” Frangione said. “All three of our plays this season were all written by women and are world premieres. They also all have female protagonists.”
While both Braha and Frangione expressed their excitement for this season’s lineup, Frangione said that smaller developmental theater groups across the country “are in a bit of an existential crisis.” “They are all closing left and right,” Frangione said. “The Humana Festival of New American Plays, which was one of the premier festivals in the country, has gone under. I can name at least six theater groups that have gone under after the pandemic. Audiences are not as robust, and they haven’t come back in full force as we had hoped. Theater groups are still struggling.”
Frangione said that, despite the challenges facing theater groups nationwide, it is important to have these groups in order to share new stories with audiences. “We have writers who are telling stories from their lives that are meaningful, and these stories help to decipher the world and make sense of it,” Frangione said. “That’s the key to everything. What makes my socks go up and down is to be part of this process.”
“The worse the world gets, the more we need to gather in a space together and to tell each other stories from our hearts,” Braha added. “These are stories that need to be told. I feel more isolated from the world every day I look at the news. I feel that it’s important to gather in a room together, just like the Greeks did, and hear stories that make us grapple with our moral dilemmas, and coming out from that room changes. It’s important to be with a group of people to listen to these stories and not be alone. Sitting in the theater is a powerful experience for individuals and is needed more than ever in these challenging times.”
For more information about Great Barrington Public Theater, visit its website.
