Playwright Chris Newbound to Workshop New Play at Berkshire Playwrights Lab
GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. – Berkshire Playwrights Lab announces that its Co-Artistic Director Bob Jaffe will direct a staged reading workshop production of The Birthday Boy by Chris Newbound on Wednesday, August 26, 2009, 8pm at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center (14 Castle Street, Great Barrington, Mass.).Admission is free. To reserve tickets, call the Berkshire Playwrights Lab office at 413.528.2544 or the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center box office at 413.528.0100.
The Birthday Boy is about what happens when there’s a sudden connection between two people that if pursued could interfere with a life that has been going along just fine; about the paths we choose to take and those we choose not to; the commitments we do honor, the worthwhile sacrifices we must make. In short, a celebration of the messy, imperfect, life that being a husband, a wife, a father, a mother, all entails in order to evolve into the grownups we’re meant to be.
Chris Newbound received his MFA at Columbia in Fiction Writing. His short stories have appeared in Seventeen, Sassy, and other literary journals. His play, The Birthday Boy, received staged readings at Main Street Stage in North Adams, Massachusetts, and in Nashua, New Hampshire. His play, Morning, Noon and Night received its world premiere at Main Street Stage in North Adams, Massachusetts, in 2004.
Bob Jaffe is Co-Artistic Director of the Berkshire Playwrights Lab, with whom he’s directed staged readings of God & Country and Guidance, as well as short plays at the annual galas. An actor and director, he is based in New York City and Providence, RI. He has recently been touring a one-man show by writer-director David Eliet, But for the Grace... (a commission from the Rhode Island Food Bank), which played at the 2008 New York International Fringe Festival. This season, he played Dr. Timothy Matchett in Finishing House at eavesdrop®/Dixon Place and Dr. Sweet in Bug at the Providence Black Repertory Company. Other recent performances include the Providence Black Repertory’s World Premiere of Black Maria by Kevin Young, Amadeus for the Berkshire Theatre Festival, The Bacchae for the Brandeis Theatre Company, and The Theatre of a Two-Headed Calf's Major Barbara at La MaMa E.T.C. He originated …and then you go on. An Anthology of the Works of Samuel Beckett at various theatres and Off-Broadway. He played Charlie Gueno in Showtime’s Brotherhood. He directed the world premiere of William S. Yellow Robe Jr.’s Better-n-Indins, the NY premiere of Were You There When the Sugar Beets Got Married?, commissioned by the violinist Midori, with text and illustrations by Maurice Sendak and music by Pierre Jalbert, Grammy Award-winner Bill Harley’s Get Lost: Rules for Travelers, Rose Weaver’s Menopause Mama, and Kenny Carnes’ Pieces of War, now touring the U.S. He is an affiliated artist at the Providence Black Repertory Company and a board member of Perishable Theatre and the Ensemble Studio Theatre, all of which focus upon the development of new works for the stage.
The cast for the reading of The Birthday Boy includes Geneva Carr and Charles Socarides and two more actors TBA.
Founded in 2006 by theater professionals Joe Cacaci, Bob Jaffe, Jim Frangione, and Matthew Penn, Berkshire Playwrights Lab is dedicated to encouraging, developing, and presenting new plays. Through readings, workshops, and fully-staged productions, the Lab provides emerging and established writers with a professional and creative environment, while offering audiences the unique and provocative opportunity to share in the dramatic evolution of premiere works. For more information about this new organization, see www.berkshireplaywrightslab.org.
