Tom Frey | Associate Artistic Director

Dear Friends,
 
Spring is here! I’m sitting on the porch as I write to you, windows finally open. After the challenges and heartbreak that have marked the past year, I am beginning to feel a great deal of renewed hope and excitement about the future, bit by vaccinated bit. I hope you share this feeling.
 
Your support and encouragement have made the current “forced intermission” at the Players much more bearable and have allowed us to think creatively about our future.  Thank you.
 
The past year has given us an opportunity to imagine how we will be an even better Peterborough Players. In addition to the public health concerns brought about by the pandemic and the need to put audience, performer, and staff safety first, there is a renewed call for equity, diversity, and inclusion in the theatre and the world right now.
 
We want to answer this call.  As a result, we have spent our intermission not only planning for when we can produce live theatre again, but also asking bigger questions:  Who do we want to be?  What can we do now to help ensure the future of the Players?  What is the theatre’s responsibility to this town, this region, and beyond?
 
We envision a chance to create art with gratitude for all the support you have shown us and with a sense of renewed energy in knowing we have an opportunity to be part of the healing.
 
I am thrilled to tell you now that the Players plans to restart with three plays this summer, beginning in early August. All will be produced in a way that is safe and comfortable for our audiences, as well as inclusive and equitable for our artists. 
 
As far back as last summer, we knew that the play we would return with would need to be one of historic significance, a play that we had a deep relationship to, one that would speak of where we’ve been, where we are now, and where we’re going.  We had to reach deep into the DNA of the Players and hear what it had to tell us.  Any guesses?  You got it: Thornton Wilder’s Our Town! 
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This summer we will produce the familiar in a bold new way.  We are proposing a two-week run of Our Town to be performed outdoors, in downtown Peterborough, on the Green between the Guernsey Building and the Town House.  In this way the town of Peterborough itself becomes a backdrop to the performance.  
 
Our Town will be followed by two additional shows, outdoors on the Players grounds, that also speak to this moment in time, and provide some much-needed celebration.       
 
As we all begin to emerge from the pandemic, the Peterborough Players intends to be part
of the harmonizing force represented in Our Town, a force that, to paraphrase Wilder, helps us all “to realize life while we live it—every, every minute”.        
 
Restarting the Players requires a significant investment. Your support of this is vital in our achieving this unprecedented event, vital in helping us express that the Players has been listening and is responding to the changes in the world around us, vital to continuing to build the future of
our Theatre.
 
As we realize life, and the joy that the Players brings to our lives and the Monadnock Region, I ask you to consider making a generous donation today.  Your support now is vital towards the Grand Restart.
 
As I put away my winter boots and look forward to lacing up my sneakers, the anticipation
of returning to the stage with my family of artists, surrounded by you my Players family in the audience, makes me feel buoyant. There’s hope in the air.
 
           
With Gratitude,

Tom Frey
Associate Artistic Director