2021 Weston Playbill

WESTON 2021

SEASON 85

Dear Friends,

It brings me great joy to welcome you all back to Weston. It has been more than a year since our last live performance and we are thrilled to be with you today. When we closed our doors in March 2020, we knew that we would return — this wonderful theatre has withstood fire, flood, war, and now a pandemic that kept us all apart for one very long year.

I recently spoke with an actor who was a member of the company during the 1962 fire that destroyed the original Weston Playhouse building. He recounted the story of how a tent went up the very next day and the show went on, under a canopy very much like the one we are sitting under together today. We performed under a tent for our 25th anniversary, just as we do in this our 85th anniversary season. Then as now, the show must go on with creativity, tenacity, and an abiding connection to our community. I am thrilled to be sharing our second outdoor season with you. Welcome to Weston, and enjoy the show!

Susanna Gellert Executive Artistic Director

SUSANNA GELLERT (Director, Executive Artistic Director) is a director, producer, and teacher. Prior to joining Weston in July 2018, she was Associate Producer and Director of the Studio at New York’s acclaimed Theatre for a New Audience. There she produced shows such as Shakespeare’s Pericles directed by Sir Trevor Nunn, the world premiere of Adrienne Kennedy’s He Brought Her Heart Back In A Box directed by Evan Yionoulis, and award winning productions of Thornton Wilder’s The Skin Of Our Teeth and An Octoroon by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. Susanna was Artistic Producer and Resident Director at Center Stage in Baltimore where she developed the theater’s ground breaking Third Space Initiative and produced My America , a nation-wide project which commissioned monologues by Christopher Durang, Neil LaBute, Lynn Nottage, and others. Directing credits in New York and Baltimore include Crimes of the Heart by Beth Henley, Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine , and world premieres of Mud Blue Sky by Marisa Wegrzyn, The Lacy Project by Alena Smith, and Open the Dark Door by David Nugent. Susanna teaches in the MFA Directing program at The New School. She holds degrees from Yale University, Columbia University, and the University of Chicago.