It’s a powerhouse trio with too many credits and accolades to list. Theresa Rebeck is an American playwright, director, television writer, and novelist, and “the most Broadway-produced female playwright of our time.” She is known also for her work on both NYPD Blue and more recently, Smash. You’ve seen her name more locally at the Dorset Theatre Festival (Dig, and Downstairs starring sibs Tim and Tyne Daly). Broadway works include Dead Accounts, Seminar, Mauritius, Bernhardt/Hamlet, and I Need That. And now she is here, in our own Upper Valley, directing Samantha Inside Out, a one-night only staged reading at Shaker Bridge Theatre on May 30 at 7:00 p.m.
Jayne Atkinson (Samantha) has enjoyed a long and varied career as an actress, director, and producer. Jayne made her Broadway debut in a revival production of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons. Other Broadway credits include The Rainmaker (Tony nomination), Our Town with Paul Newman, Enchanted April (Tony nomination, Drama Desk nomination; Outer Critics Circle Award) and Blithe Spirit with the wonderful Angela Lansbury. She starred in an incomparable two-hander, Still, with Tim Daly at Vermont’s Dorset Theatre Festival in 2023.
Finally, the UV’s own award-winning Marisa Smith has authored ten-minute plays performed at various venues as well as The Naked Librarian (forever a favorite) and Mad Love at Northern Stage. She is the playwright of Samantha Inside Out.
“Samantha, a woman of a certain age has had it—with her life, her marriage, modern life, everything. She’s a high school English teacher, mother of grown twins and wife of Eliot, a cruel, pompous philanderer. After a humiliating and violent encounter with her husband, Samantha flees a stultifying Christmas party at the President of the College’s house. She ends up in the host’s teenage daughter’s cluttered room on the third floor. Amid the chaos Samantha reviews the wreckage of her life and reveals her truth and her secrets out loud. By doing so Samantha charts a new course for herself. It’s never too late to start again.”
Staged readings are a wonderful and singular experience that will introduce you to a work, often early in its development. Go, and you’ll be able to say you saw this play in one of its first incarnations.
Tickets: $10 for the general public / Free for Shaker Bridge subscription holders. Tickets for May 30th available through the Shaker Bridge Theatre website at www.shakerbridgetheatre.org or by calling 802-281-6848 or emailing boxoffice.shakerbridge@gmail.com.
All tickets for February 28 (when show was previously scheduled) are valid for May 30.
Shaker Bridge Theatre is now located at the Briggs Opera House in White River Junction, Vermont.
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And in case you are wondering . . . Susan B. Apel shuttered a lifelong career as a law professor to continue an interest (since kindergarten) in writing. Her freelance business, The Next Word, includes literary and feature writing; her work has appeared in a variety of lit mags and other publications including Art New England, The Woven Tale Press, The Arts Fuse, and Persimmon Tree. She connects with her neighbors through Artful, her blog about arts and culture in the Upper Valley. She’s in love with the written word.