BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND!
BSC’s 2025 10×10 NEW PLAY FESTIVAL
10 TEN-MINUTE PLAYS x 10 PLAYWRIGHTS = 100 MINUTES OF PURE JOY… NOW IN ITS 14th YEAR!
Directed by Alan Paul and Matthew Penn
February 13 – March 9
St. Germain Stage at the Sydelle and Lee Blatt Performing Arts Center
36 Linden Street, Pittsfield, MA
TITLES & PLAYWRIGHTS
Altared
By Brent Askari
With her sister’s wedding on the line, Gwen scrambles to rein in her unpredictable mother.
Choosing You
By Rachel Lynett
As Aurora moves through her day, she finds herself torn between the two very different lives she might have lived and if she ultimately made the right choice.
Forever is a Long Time
By Jessica Provenz
What if when you get married, it’s truly “til death do us part” and annulment and divorce are not an option? Ready to commit to one another… forever?
The Friendship Dynamic
By Alex Dremann
Four friends decide to go on an off-roading adventure to get out of their rut, if they can just get out of their driveway.
A Happy Child
By Melinda Gros
Your child returns home and every word you utter can be the wrong word… and you SO do not want to get it wrong… but you also need to keep your grandchild safe…
Ordained
By Mark Harvey Levine
Two strangers in an airport suddenly find themselves with a proposal they can’t pass up.
Poetry, Prose and… Pirates!
By Ken Preuss
An author attends her monthly critique circle but discovers some unexpected and unethical similarities between her writing and that of her peers.
Safe Haven
By James McLindon
A fraught holiday, a desperate family, a public servant: Can this Thanksgiving be saved?
Senior Prom
By Robert Weibezahl
When high school friends Deborah and Mike unexpectedly reunite at Shady Acres Independent Living, some truths about past memories are clarified.
Wheel of Fortune Reversed
By Scott C. Sickles
Death has come for Michael. Which is not necessarily a bad thing because Michael has a bucket list only the Grim Reaper can fulfill.
CAST
Matt Neely: BSC: 10×10 (12 yrs), The Crucible. Off-Broadway: The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged), Hospital. Off-Off Broadway: The Trial, The Heart of a Dog, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Furies, Twelfth Night, Sex and Other Collisions, Spare Change, Marriage, Unreal City. MFA in Acting from Carnegie Mellon University and The Moscow Art Theater, BS Skidmore College. Matt is a member of the Williamstown Select Board. Stay tuned for his new podcast about creativity at thevibecontrol.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. Coming April 2025. Love to Margo, Allie and Tommy!
Peggy Pharr Wilson: BSC: Associate Artist, Forgiveness, Boca, America V2.1, Gaslight, His Girl Friday, Guys and Dolls, The Crucible, To Kill A Mockingbird, Carousel, Laramie Project: Epilogue, 10×10 (14 yrs). Theater: Off Peak, Dad, Public Speaking 101 (Great Barrington Public), Doubt (BAT), Leap Year (Shakes & Co), Six Women with Brain Death (co-author, and performed in New York, Chicago, Dallas & Kansas City); Sweeney Todd (best actress Ovation Award Denver Post), Shirley Valentine, Moon for the Misbegotten, 3 Viewings and many others (Creede Repertory Theater); Dallas Theatre Center, Theatre 3, Kansas City Rep, Unicorn, KC Lyric Opera, White River, Rose Theatre.
PLAYWRIGHTS
Brent Askari (Altared) BSC: 10×10(2021, 2023, 2024); His plays American Underground and Andy Warhol in Iran premiered at BSC, with Andy Warhol in Iran subsequently staged at Chicago’s Northlight Theatre (2023), City Theatre Pittsburgh (2024), and an upcoming production at Mosaic Theater in Washington, DC (2025). His new comedy Advice debuts at Florida Studio Theatre and B Street Theatre this year. Brent is the winner of the NNPN Smith Prize for Political Theater for The Refugees, which premiered at Gulfshore Playhouse in 2024. Other recent productions include Hard Cell at Geva Theater Center and Dirty Deeds Downeast at Penobscot Theater Company.
Alex Dremann (The Friendship Dynamic) is a Philadelphia based playwright who studied playwriting at the University of Southern California and has had more than 500 productions of his short plays. Full lengths include: Split Pea Pod (The Brick Playhouse), Postcoital Variations (Philadelphia Theatre Workshop), The :nv:s:ble Play (Theatre of NOTE) and The Cure (Dayton Playhouse). Evenings of his collected short plays include: Slap Happy (Madlab Theatre), Bipolar by Thursday (Theatre Neo) and 13 Lemonade Ave. (Secret Room Theatre). Published short plays include On the Porch One Crisp Spring Morning in The Humana Festival 2009: The Complete Plays. www.alexdremann.com
Melinda Gros (A Happy Child) I write mostly about women – betrayed, betraying, bowling, hustling breakfast, facing down the pandemic, muscled by tech giants, pregnant (as misunderstood by her fetuses), re-connecting after estrangement, reliving problematic pasts, drunk on life or just drunk. I look compassionately on my characters, their regretted might-have-beens, and their still unrealized dreams – they may be buffeted by the world but they have agency. Pain is confronted, truths revealed and kindness sometimes, but not always, offers redemption. These are stories of women’s lives: sometimes messy, often tumultuous, always real. I started writing plays after careers in dance and costume and clothing design/manufacture.
Mark Harvey Levine (Ordained) BSC: 10×10 (2020, 2022). Mark has had over 2200 productions of his short plays everywhere from Bangalore to Bucharest and Seoul to Sao Paolo. Full evenings of his work, like Didn’t See That Coming and A Very Special Holiday Special, have been shown around the world, including at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and a multi-year tour of Brazil. His new full-length, Save Hamlet, premiered at the Laboratory Theater of Florida and is playing all over, with an upcoming production in South Africa! Not bad for a guy from Pittsburgh, huh?
Rachel Lynett (Choosing You) (she/they) BSC: Well-Intentioned White People. Rachel is a queer Afro-Latine playwright, producer, and teaching artist. Their plays have been featured at San Diego Rep, Magic Theatre, Mirrorbox Theatre, Barrington Stage Company, Theatre Lab, Theatre Prometheus, Florida Studio Theatre, and Orlando Shakespeare Theatre. Rachel Lynett is also the 2021 recipient of the Yale Drama Prize for their play, Apologies to Lorraine Hansberry (You Too August Wilson) and the 2021 recipient of the National Latinx Playwriting Award for their play, Black Mexican. Their play, Missing Socks and a Line of Coke was also a 2024 Blue Ink Award finalist. Lynett received commissions from Barrington Stage Company, Florida Studio Theatre, and Yale Repertory Theatre.
James McLindon (Safe Haven) BSC: 10×10 (2013, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2024). James is a member of the Nylon Fusion Theatre Company in New York. His plays have been produced or developed at theaters across America and around the world including the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference (selection and six-time semifinalist), Lark, PlayPenn, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, hotINK Festival, Irish Repertory, CAP21, Samuel French Festival, Victory Gardens, Hudson Stage Company, Abingdon, New Repertory, Lyric Stage, Detroit Rep, Great Plains Theatre Conference, Seven Devils, Telluride Playwrights Festival, Ashland New Plays Festival, Boston Playwrights Theatre, Colony Theatre, Theatricum Botanicum, Circus Theatricals, and Arkansas Rep. They have been published by Dramatic Publishing, Smith & Kraus, Brooklyn Publishing, Applause Books, Next Stage Press, and Original Works Publishing.
Ken Preuss (Poetry, Prose and… Pirates!) is a Florida-based writer and performer who became a teacher to guarantee an audience five days a week. Although his published one-acts for teens and his collection of short plays for adults have been produced in festivals and schools in Australia, Canada, China, England, Germany, Guatemala, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Lithuania, Malaysia, Mexico, Nicaragua, New Zealand, Scotland, South Africa, Thailand, and all 50 States, Ken can be found rooted near Orlando with his wife, two sons, and assorted pets.
Jessica Provenz (Forever is a Long Time) BSC: 10×10 (2020, 2021, 2024). BSC commissioned and premiered BOCA in 2021, directed by Julianne Boyd with Debra Jo Rupp, Peggy Pharr Wilson and Robert Zukerman. BOCA is currently playing at Florida Rep. True Art premiered at Dorset Theatre Festival in 2024 with workshops at Westport Country Playhouse, Pioneer Theatre, The Directors Company. Other plays include A Wake on Chappaquiddick (Cape Cod Theatre Project, New Georges), Andromeda (Barrow Group, Berkshire Playwrights Lab), Better than Chocolate (Juilliard). A two-time recipient of the Lecomte du Nouy for Emerging Playwrights and Writer-in-Residence at The Mount. Jessica is the Director of Development at BSC. Education: Northwestern (B.S), Juilliard (Artists Diploma).
Scott C. Sickles (Wheel of Fortune Reversed) (he/him) is an LGBTQ+/ neurodivergent/ Mixed Korean American writer. His plays have been staged in New York City, across the US, and internationally at Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, City Theatre (Miami), Portland Stage, Garry Marshall Theatre, HB Studios, Road Theatre Company, Leviathan Lab, Barrington Stage, Gulfshore Playhouse, Dayton Playhouse, Whim Productions, Valdez Theater Conference, Midwest Dramatists, and The Lark Play Development Center. Published: Samuel French/Concord, Smith & Kraus, Applause, Next Stage Press. Notable honors: Edgerton Foundation New Play Award, Relentless Award Honorable Mention, O’Neill finalist. Emmy and Writers Guild of America awards for General Hospital.
Robert Weibezahl (Senior Prom) BSC:10×10 (2022, 2023). His plays have been performed live and virtually across the US, as well as in the UK and Australia. And Lightning Struck: Mary Shelley and the Curse of Creation, most recently performed by Theatre on the Ridge in Paradise, California, is published by Next Stage Press; Gown (BSC, 2022) is included in The Best 10-Minute Plays 2023; and his monologues appear in The Covid Monologues, PlayGround Experiment’s 5th Annual Faces of America, and The Best Women’s Stage Monologues 2024. He lives in California. robertweibezahl.wordpress.com
CREATIVES
ALAN PAUL (Director) spent 15 seasons at the Tony Award-winning Shakespeare Theatre Company, where he served as Associate Artistic Director. His shows at STC bridged the gap between classical and popular culture. His productions of Camelot, Kiss Me, Kate and Man of La Mancha are the theatre’s #2, #3 and #4 highest-selling shows, and Camelot won the Helen Hayes Award for Best Musical. Alan has received acclaim for his bold interpretations of Shakespeare, including a modern-dress Romeo and Juliet and The Comedy of Errors set in 1960s Greece. Alan directed the film of Patrick Page’s All the Devils Are Here, which was a New York Times Critics Pick. Alan is particularly dedicated to new work and has spent much of his career developing new plays and musicals. At STC, Alan commissioned Lauren Gunderson to write a feminist reimagining of Peter Pan and Wendy which premiered in 2019. He recently directed Our Town with a new score by Michael John LaChiusa. Other STC productions include A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, The Boys From Syracuse, The Winter’s Tale and Twelfth Night. Alan has directed productions at theatres across the country including Kiss Me, Kate at Seattle’s 5th Avenue Theatre and The King and I at Chicago’s Drury Lane Theatre, for which he was nominated for a Jeff Award for Best Director. In Washington, Alan has directed at the city’s top theatres, including The Pajama Game at Arena Stage, Cabaret at Olney Theatre Center, Spring Awakening at Round House Theatre, The Rocky Horror Show and Silence! The Musical at Studio Theatre, and I Am My Own Wife at Signature Theatre.
MATTHEW PENN (Director) BSC: 10×10 2017–22, Judgment Day, Typhoid Mary. Penn most recently directed The Sweet Taste of Freedom, a film shot entirely in the Berkshires. The film won Best Drama at the New York Shorts International Film Festival. To date the film has played in 14 festivals in 4 different countries. Penn is an Emmy-nominated director and has directed and/or produced over 200 hour-long dramatic television shows. He has worked for every major network as well as Netflix and HBO. He began his television career at Law & Order where he earned an Emmy nomination for directing the show’s 200th episode and became the show’s Executive Producer. Penn’s TV credits include iconic series like: The Sopranos, Law & Order and NYPD Blue as well as Queen of the South (Co-Executive Producer/Director) Orange is the New Black, Blue Bloods, Damages, Royal Pains, The Mist, Secrets and Lies. On stage Penn directed Jane Anderson’s Mother of the Maid at New York’s Public Theater starring Glenn Close. Berkshire theatre audiences also know Penn from his work at many of the region’s most significant theatres: Shakespeare & Co.: The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Vanya and Sonya and Masha and Spike. BTG: The Actor’s Nightmare and Sister Mary Ignatius Explains it All for You. Penn was a Co-Artistic Director of Berkshire Playwrights Lab for 13 seasons.
MOIRA O’SULLIVAN (Assistant Director)
PEGGY WALSH (Costume Designer) has spent most of her career performing and designing for Musical Theatre. Favorite design projects are Children of Eden, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Angels in America and The Pirates of Penzance. For the last 12 years, she has been working with high school students for Shakespeare & Company’s Fall Festival. She has costumed in high schools throughout the Berkshires including Taconic, Monument Mountain, Springfield Central, Waldorf, Mount Everett, Chatham and Pittsfield High School. She also designs for Pittsfield’s Shakespeare in the Park project.
CAL MURPHY (Assistant Costume Designer)
ERIKA JOHNSON (Lighting Designer)
AMY ALTADONNA (Sound Designer)
RENEE LUTZ (Production Stage Manager)
NATHANIEL BOKAER-SMITH (Assistant Stage Manager)
McCorkle Casting: Pat McCorkle, CSA; Rebecca Weiss, CSA (Casting) (C.S.A.) Casting actors for Barrington Stage for 21 years. Pat McCorkle is pleased to be an Associate Artist at BSC. Broadway: Over 50 productions including On the Town, Amazing Grace, End of the Rainbow, The Lieutenant of Inishmore, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Amadeus, She Loves Me, A Few Good Men. Off Broadway: highlights — Clever Little Lies; Sheer Madness; Tribes; Our Town (Barrow Street); Freud’s Last Session; Toxic Avenger; Almost, Maine; Driving Miss Daisy. Feature film: Premium Rush, Ghost Town, The Thomas Crown Affair, Die Hard with a Vengeance, School Ties, etc. Television: Twisted, St. George, Sesame Street, Hack, Californication, Max Bickford, Chappelle’s Show, Strangers with Candy, Barbershop, etc. mccorklecasting.com
CHARLIE SIEDENBURG (Berkshires Press Representative) (Associate Artist, 19th Season) joined the BSC family in 2005 and has represented over 150 BSC productions. His work has led to features in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, Associated Press and American Theatre Magazine. His many PR credits include the Metropolitan Opera (Live in HD), Paper Mill Playhouse, George Street Playhouse, Hartford Stage, Goodspeed Musicals, Long Wharf Theatre, Surflight Theatre and Two River Theater Company. He serves as Press Rep for Wagner College Theatre, The Minty Awards, Ghostlight Productions and Forestburgh Playhouse. Charlie is a 1995 Theatre/Arts Administration graduate of Wagner College on Staten Island, where he currently teaches Theatre Appreciation. In 2021, he received a Berkshire Theatre Critics Association Special Award for Exceptional Support of Arts Journalism in the Berkshires.
THE PRESS ROOM (National Press Representatives) Broadway: Hamilton, The Book of Mormon, Prima Facie, Room. Off-Broadway: Blue Man Group, Death Drop, The Fears. Upcoming: Female Troubles, Personality: The Lloyd Price Musical, A Wonderful World. Recent credits: Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish, Paradise Square, The Waverly Gallery, Three Tall Women, Farinelli and the King. Clients include: The Acting Company, Drama Book Shop, Hershey Felder, Hunter Theater Project, National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, New York Classical Theatre, Ogunquit Playhouse, Paper Mill Playhouse, Rosie’s Theater Kids, Shakespeare’s Globe, Theatre Row, Vineyard Theatre, The Wooster Group.
TO BE ANNOUNCED