Chester Theatre Company, which like many arts organizations struggled through the pandemic, came back last summer to offer its first season at Chester Town Hall since 2020.

Now the company is preparing for its 2023 season, and they’ll do it under the guidance of two new co-producing artistic directors.

James Barry and Tara Franklin, who both have long track records with the company as performers, have taken over direction of Chester Theatre from Daniel Elihu Kramer, who led CTC from 2015 until the end of last year.

Kramer, who currently chairs Smith College’s Theatre Department, says his increasing responsibilities at the school, coupled with the growing workload at Chester, led him to step down from the company. But he says CTC is in good hands with Barry and Franklin.

“I’m absolutely thrilled to see Tara and James” take over as producing directors, Kramer said in an email. “Artists will know and trust them. Audiences will know and trust them. They’re both brilliant artists, and artists I love working with. They both care deeply about theatre and Chester Theatre Company in particular.”

Despite the enormous headaches of dealing with the pandemic — COVID-19 wiped out CTC’s 2020 season entirely — Kramer said he relished his time there and felt the company had made some real progress during his tenure, telling “compelling contemporary stories full of exceptional performances.”

“I loved working and creating relationships with our artists and our audiences, and the community we’ve made together,” he said. “I also know the theatre deserves to be led by someone (in this case two someones) able and ready to bring their fullest attention and energy to it.”

Now, added Kramer, he’ll have more time to pursue opportunities for freelance directing and writing new stage adaptations, among other things. He recently traveled to India to meet theater artists there and to lead some workshops. “I’m also excited to imagine spending a week on the cape with my wife!” he joked.

Barry and Franklin, a married couple who live in Berkshire County, have plenty of experience in regional theater, including at CTC, and have also performed in New York and other locations. Both have connections to Smith College, too: Barry earned an MFA in playwriting there last year, and Franklin has been a lecturer at the college in theater.

Franklin also has served for a number of years as CTC’s associate artistic director and director of education. “Tara,” said Kramer, “knows the theatre inside and out.”

The couple say they’re honored to continue CTC’s legacy as a place to, as Franklin puts it, “create thought-provoking work, collaborate with exceptional artists, and connect with our incredible audiences.”

They’ve also developed a basic game plan for dividing up their responsibilities, with Franklin handling the theater’s daily operations and Barry serving as the main liaison with participating artists. What’s more, they won’t work together on the same productions.

What’s on tap

For the 2023 season, they’ve put together a lineup that includes a play by Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Baker, another by Pulitzer Prize finalist Rajiv Joseph, and a drama and comedy.

In a statement, Barry and Franklin characterized the work as “high stakes, actor-driven storytelling bookended by two very different plays that speak to the power and mystery of theatre itself,” works that also “embrace a compelling range of humor and heart.”

The season opens June 22 with “The Making of a Great Moment” by Peter Sinn Nachtrieb, a tale of two actors, Mona and Terry, who — on bicycles — are touring their play “Great Moments in Human Achievement,” hoping they’ll inspire audiences and bring humanity together. But who’s actually willing to sit through the couple’s four-hour production? And where can they get a shower?

“The Making of a Great Moment,” according to CTC, features a play-within-a-play, and it is “an uproariously funny love letter to the theatre. Or is it?”

Barry will put on another hat for this production by directing it.

From July 6 to 16, CTC will stage “Guards at the Taj” by Rajiv Joseph, a 2015 drama with moments of dark comedy set in India in the 17th century. The two lowly guards are entrusted to protect the beautiful new Taj Mahal — but they’re forbidden to look at it.

As play notes put it, “Perfection comes at a price, and those in power decide who pays and at what cost.”

“The Light,” by Loy A. Webb, to be presented July 27 to Aug. 6, tells the story of a Chicago couple, Rashad and Genesis, who have just gotten engaged. To celebrate, Rashad wants to take Genesis to see a show by a popular rapper, but she refuses because the man once raped one of her friends.

The “celebration” instead devolves into a heated argument, exposing more secrets that threaten to overshadow the couple’s future in what Stage Left calls “a story of revelation, redress, and hopeful reconciliation cued at the intersection of #MeToo and Black Lives Matter.”

Chester Theatre’s regular season concludes Aug. 10-20 with Baker’s “Circle Mirror Transformation,” which the New York Times has called “an absolute feast” and which won an Obie Award in 2010 for Best New American Play

The story follows five people taking part in an amateur acting class in a Vermont community center. Though they’ve come to learn about performing, their games and exercises teach them more about themselves and each other than they do about theater.

The play, one of the first big successes for Baker, the 1999 Amherst Regional High School graduate and 2017 MacArthur Grant winner, will be directed by Kramer and will also feature Franklin as one of the cast members.

“I look forward to being in the rehearsal room there without thinking about the ten thousand other things that need to be happening at the theatre!” Kramer quipped.

In addition, Barry will direct a workshop production July 20-21 of “Unreconciled,” a play based on a true story of a young boy who’s determined to become an actor, and the priest who exploits his love of theater to abuse him — and how the main character finds his voice to save himself.

More information about Chester Theatre Company can be found at chestertheatre.org/.

Steve Pfarrer can be reached at spfarrer@gazettenet.com.

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