CELESTE LECESNE is best known for his award-winning solo shows One Man Band, Word of Mouth, and The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey. The NYTimes has ranked him “among the most talented solo performers of his (or any) generation.” He wrote the short film Trevor, which won an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short and he is co-founder of The Trevor Project, the only nationwide Lifeline for LGBTQ youth. He has written three novels for young adults, and created The Letter Q, a collection of letters by queer writers written to their younger selves. Celeste is also the co-founder of The Future Perfect, a national arts initiative for LGBTQ+ youth. For more info visit www.celestelecesne.com

THE PLEIN AIR PLAYS

Fri, Aug 13 at 5p & 6p

Sat, Aug 14 and Sun, Aug 15
at 4p, 5p & 6p TICKETS

At each presentation, three short plays are staged in three secret locations near the Opera House, with audiences traveling by car to reach each performance site.

Total running time—including the three plays and travel to each performance site—is expected to be approximately 90 minutes.

Please take note that to reach each performance location, audiences will be also walking a short distance across grass that is sometimes gently sloping. For whom this may be a concern, please write info@ancramoperahouse.org so that we can make accommodations.

At each play location, blankets and some seating will be provided. Audiences are also welcome to bring their own seating, if preferred, or to stand. Each individual piece has a running time of approximately 20 minutes.

We are THRILLED to announce that we will now be able to offer all BOF 2021 season performances at FULL CAPACITY!  Ticket sales for Falstaff and Glory Denied are open now.  Reservations for Much Ado About Shakespeare can be made through The Mount’s website.  Use the links below to learn more and to get your tickets today! 

SECOND-STAGE OPERA

Based on the novel by Tom Philpott, this stirring drama is based on the true story of Vietnam veteran and America’s longest-held prisoner of war, Colonel Jim Thompson. 

​

FREE CONCERT

Join BOF for an evening of music inspired by the great William Shakespeare, performed by members of our internationally renowned cast of Falstaff.  

MAINSTAGE OPERA

The crown jewel of our season! Falstaff, Verdi’s last opera and one of the world’s greatest comedies, will feature an all-star cast alongside the BOF Orchestra and Chorus. 

Tickets for BOF’s 2021 indoor productions of Glory Denied and Falstaff are both available for purchase through the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center box office. 

Click on the buttons below to learn more about our 2021 season productions.  Meet the acclaimed artists returning to the BOF stage this summer, and get to know some exciting new voices!  

​

Glory Denied Much Ado About Shakespeare Falstaff

You can learn more about our COVID-19 audience safety protocols and ticketing logistics here.

Although this married musical duo has been compared to Bobby Short and Lena Horne, Fred and Ginger, and Lunt and Fontanne, the “golden couple’s” style is all their own, with a wide
choice of material that brings the generations together. Their repertoire runs the gamut from Cole Porter to Paul Simon, from Duke Ellington to Joni Mitchell, from Sinatra to Sting. Eric and Barbara make all of it fresh, new, spontaneous, and fun — and their audiences feel they’ve been to a terrific party where the music and the stories have been equally great. Regular performers at New York’s most prestigious clubs and concert halls, Eric and Barbara’s cozy New York apartment is filled with awards for their concerts and recordings. Winners of 8 MAC Awards, 5 New York Bistro Awards and the New York Nightlife Award, most recently they were honored for the fourth time with the Manhattan Association of Cabarets and Clubs (MAC) award for Major Duo Artists. Barbara’s latest CDs, “WRITTEN IN THE STARS” and “BUSY BEING FREE”, were both awarded the MAC Award for Recording of the Year. Their fast-paced and swinging concerts of songs from the jazz and pop songbooks have been hailed as “exhilarating” and “witty” by The New York Times, and have had audiences standing and cheering from coast to coast and in London.

ALLISON DREW

Allison Drew has a PhD from UCLA and is professor emerita at the University of York and honorary professor at the University of Cape Town. She has published five scholarly books and numerous articles on anti-apartheid and anti-colonial movements in South Africa and Algeria. Her latest book, a memoir, is called Searching for My Missing Father: An American Noir (Black Rose Writing) and concerns her attempts to discover the truth behind her father’s vanishing.

Allison Drew’s frail, ninety-one-year-old father Tom Drew vanishes without a trace from his Salisbury, Connecticut home in July 2007. His caregiver claims he left his house on foot. Despite massive searches, he is not found.

Seeking to discover what happened to her father, Allison embarks on a brutalizing psychological journey leading her to America’s eroded democratic institutions. When she criticizes the police handling of the disappearance, she is arrested for criminal trespass of her father’s home. Dragged into the criminal justice system, denied her right to trial, she sees and feels the system’s injustices.

Allison’s memoir unravels the threads binding small towns and their police in a cocoon of silence. A forensic examination of the police investigation into her father’s vanishing, it is also a study of prejudice through the prism of dementia and an exploration of the emotional impact of a missing relative.

ALLISON DREW

Allison Drew has a PhD from UCLA and is professor emerita at the University of York and honorary professor at the University of Cape Town. She has published five scholarly books and numerous articles on anti-apartheid and anti-colonial movements in South Africa and Algeria. Her latest book, a memoir, is called Searching for My Missing Father: An American Noir (Black Rose Writing) and concerns her attempts to discover the truth behind her father's vanishing.

Allison Drew’s frail, ninety-one-year-old father Tom Drew vanishes without a trace from his Salisbury, Connecticut home in July 2007. His caregiver claims he left his house on foot. Despite massive searches, he is not found.

Seeking to discover what happened to her father, Allison embarks on a brutalizing psychological journey leading her to America’s eroded democratic institutions. When she criticizes the police handling of the disappearance, she is arrested for criminal trespass of her father’s home. Dragged into the criminal justice system, denied her right to trial, she sees and feels the system’s injustices.

Allison’s memoir unravels the threads binding small towns and their police in a cocoon of silence. A forensic examination of the police investigation into her father’s vanishing, it is also a study of prejudice through the prism of dementia and an exploration of the emotional impact of a missing relative.

SUMMER PLAY LAB

August 7-16; Fridays, Saturdays at 8p; Sundays at 7p

Featuring new work by Heather Christian, Mariah Ayscue and Frank Boyd performed in virtual staged readings.

Two Broadway veterans, producer/general manager Gary Gunas and recording executive/playwright Billy Rosenfield, regale us with stories about the shows and people they’ve been involved with over the course of their long careers and life together. 

OLD SHOW QUEENS

Daniel Elihu Kramer became Producing Artistic Director of Chester Theatre Company in fall of 2015, after four years as Associate Artistic Director, and produced his first season in 2016. At CTC, he has directed ten plays, including the Berkshire Theatre Award winners The Aliens and Every Brilliant Thing. In 2011, CTC produced his play Pride@Prejudice, and in 2016 CTC premiered his play My Jane. (CTC’s production of Pride@Prejudice transferred to Capital Rep in 2012.) He works nationally as a theatre director and playwright, and as a film director. He is Professor of Theatre and a member of the Film and Media Studies program at Smith College.

Daniel’s CTC productions of The Turn of the Screw and The Amish Project were named by the Berkshire Eagle as among the Best Plays of their respective years, and he was named one of each season’s Notable Directors. He has received the Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Production for A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Boston Theatre Works, and his production of The Pillowman at the Contemporary American Theatre Company received awards for Best Production and Best Direction. His first feature film, Kitchen Hamlet, a contemporary setting of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, won multiple awards as an official selection at film festivals throughout the U.S. His short film Recently, Long Ago premiered in 2015 at the Palm Springs International Short Film Festival.

Kramer’s play Coyote Tales, based on traditional Native American stories, is published by Samuel French, and has been produced by numerous theatre companies. Pride@Prejudice is published by Playscripts. His adaptations of Babar and of James Thurber’s Many Moons were commissioned and produced by Phoenix Theatre Company. His play Love Suicide was workshopped in a residency at Cleveland Public Theatre and at Boston Theatre Works. He was a visiting artist at the Wexner Center for the Arts, which supported the editing of Kitchen Hamlet.

Kramer holds an MFA in Directing from Yale School of Drama and a BA from Haverford College, and is a member of the Society for Stage Directors and Choreographers (SDC) and the Dramatists Guild. He was a Founding Artistic Director of Salt Lake Shakespeare, Associate Artistic Director of Spiral Stage, and assistant to the Artistic Director of Circle Repertory Theatre. Kramer was also drama editor for the Kenyon Review. As a director, dramaturg, and musician, he has worked with playwrights including Bekah Brunstetter, Bill Cain, Julia Cho, Wendy MacLeod, Eric Henry Sanders, Julian Sheppard, and Elizabeth Wong. Previous teaching includes Kenyon College (where he was chair of Dance and Theatre), Bowdoin College, and Fordham University at Lincoln Center.

Great Barrington Public Theater was founded as a collaboration of seasoned theater professionals and newcomers to professional theater, all committed to bringing new work, new voices, local talent and always-affordable tickets to audiences in the Berkshires.

Jim Frangione
(Artistic Director)

After more than ten years developing new plays with Berkshire Playwrights Lab Jim is very pleased to be part of Great Barrington Public Theater as it enters its second season. Last Spring Jim directed Anne Undeland’s acclaimed play, Lady Randy, at the Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre in Lenox; Mamet’s Romance at Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater; Private Life at HERE Arts in NY; and An Evening of Shorts by Mamet, Pinter and Silverstein at the ART/Harvard Institute for Advanced Theatre Training. Jim’s play ­Breakwater, the second of his Cape Cod plays, received its premiere last June at the Daniel Arts Center at Simon’s Rock (Berkshire Theatre Critic’s Nomination) His play, Flight of the Monarch, premiered at Gloucester Stage Company in 2017. Jim has acted for over 35 years; Off-Broadway in the original production of Oleanna, as well as the National Tour; in many plays with the Atlantic Theater Company, on Broadway and at many regional theaters: The Mark Taper Forum, Long Wharf, Alley Theater, Berkshire Theatre Festival, Actors Theatre of Louisville—and most recently in David Mamet’s Prairie Du Chien at Atlantic and Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike at Shakespeare & Company. Films: Joy, Transamerica, Spartan, Heist, State and Main, The Spanish Prisoner, Homicide, Suits, Claire Dolan and Maryam. Jim is an award-winning audiobook narrator performing over 300 titles, including David Mamet’s, Chicago.