Bring History to Life on Stage: UMass Theater at Plays in Place
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Truth is always important as an actor, regardless of the character you’re playing, but when the character is based on a real person, with real goals and real consequences, you just want to do everything you can to honor this person, to allow them to walk the Earth one more time. It feels almost as if the real person is standing behind you, with their hands on your shoulders, guiding you in the right direction.
— Emma Friend
Plays in Place, based in Boston, makes regular forays into Western Massachusetts to present “new site-specific plays (that) engage audiences with places and stories of overlooked or often-forgotten people.” Talya Kingston ‘07G is a dramaturg-researcher-playwright with an abiding interest in bringing history to life onstage. Producer-director Brianna Sloane ’14G has long cultivated an interest in, and reputation for, creating theater that brings historical events and people into the present.
Little wonder they have become members of the western outpost for this theater company — and in becoming involved, Sloane and Kingston have drawn numerous faculty, alums, and students into the project, including Emma Friend ’24.
We asked all three about their work.
Question: How did you get involved in Plays in Place? What appeals to you about this kind of work? Which projects have you been involved with?
Talya Kingston: Plays in Place's Artistic Director, Patrick Gabridge, approached me in 2022 about a new play commission. Historic Northampton was looking to commission three local playwrights to write three short plays based on historical events that happened in town in three different centuries. I ended up writing the first of these titled Circling Suspicion which concerned Mary Bliss Parsons, one of the first English settlers of Northampton who was accused of witchcraft in the 1650s. The three plays were performed as one event titled Pulling at the Roots, and Patrick asked me to Co-Produce it with him. I've been onboard as one of Plays in Place's Producers ever since!
Brianna Sloane: I met Patrick at theater events but we didn't really connect until Betty Sharpe and Laurie Saunders of Historic Northampton were curating plays for the opening of the Shepherd Barn in 2023. I ended up directing Pulling At The Roots. We produced that again the following year with almost all of the cast members returning, and it was such a positive, warm ensemble of local performers — a really memorable time.
Emma Friend: I met Brianna while doing They Don’t Pay? We Won’t Pay! with UMass Theater. She came in as a specialist in Commedia dell’Arte to help us out with the physical comedy of the show. She offered me a role in a devised piece she made, called The Mill Project, through her own theater company (TheatreTruck). Patrick attended one of the shows and shortly after we met, offered me a role in a staged reading of his play, A Light Under the Dome, that was put on in the Unitarian Society in Northampton. I adored his writing and the way he represents the humanity and power behind women of American history. Fortunately enough, he was thinking the same way about working with me and offered me a role in A Revelation of Character, which was a collaboration with the Associates of the Boston Public Library. While that was happening, I also took part in a table read for a series of plays with Plays in Place for Historic Deerfield.
Question: What does your work with Plays in Place involve?
Kingston: Plays in Place has several projects in different stages of development at all times all over New England, so we have a team of Producers who are each responsible for one or two at a time. I am currently responsible for new works for Historic Deerfield and Historic Northampton, both of which will be fully produced next year. As producer, I meet with historians at the site to listen to their stories and do some initial research into the project, then (in conjunction with the Artistic Director) I match the project to local playwrights, hire the creative team (director, costume designers, stage managers, actors), line-manage the budget, schedule internal script readings and coordinate feedback for the playwrights, coordinate rehearsal and performance logistics, remind everyone of deadlines and troubleshoot throughout! The full team of Producers have regular meetings to stay up to date on each other's projects.
Sloane: As a Director with Plays in Place I'm involved in to the playwriting process at an early stage, so that I'm involved as a Director-Dramaturg in early draft readings, participate in developmental discussions, work on a more polished reading of scripts still in process for stakeholders at the partner institution, and finally collaborating with designers, playwrights, producers and actors in the production stage.
Historic Northampton produced two staged readings I directed last year at the Unitarian Church, which was a new format for Plays in Place and a cool opportunity to bring stories staged in Boston and at the Massachusetts State House to a Western Mass audience, which does share the history of the events that were dramatized.
In 2026 Plays in Place has new plays coming to the Shepherd Barn that I am directing, and also a summer production I am directing at Historic Deerfield.
Question: It feels like the combination of historical research, writing, and presenting plays to your strengths and interests as a dramaturg — can you talk a bit about what’s appealing to you about the company?
Kingston: My undergraduate degree is in history and I'm fascinated by the way that historical stories can come alive on stage. The research component of the projects are really exciting and often involve reading original diaries, letters and documents that give us a sense of the voice and perspectives of the characters we are bringing to life.
As a playwright, I love that Place in Place is a writer-centered theater company. Playwrights get paid at every stage of development (research, writing, rehearsal and performance). This shouldn't be a radical concept, but it is! And what's more, we know going into writing that our play is going to be fully produced, which is also unusual. I also love that we hire local theater artists to tell these stories and we write and perform on site — that really grounds us and gives the whole experience meaning and depth.
Question: Can you talk about the common threads between Plays in Place and your work with TheatreTruck (a company Sloane co-founded with fellow alum Elizabeth Pangburn that focused on devising plays based in local historical events and characters)?
Sloane: For me, the overlap is primarily in centering history and site-specific production.
When Elizabeth Pangburn and I were collaborating as TheatreTruck, we really worked thematically and followed our contemporary understanding of historical stories to work in an investigative manner. We were building plays as research, and both of the plays I authored (The Mill Project, conceived by Elizabeth and me and then built through a devising process that included dramaturgy by Emily MacLeod; and The Emily Dickinson Project, co-written with Wylder Ayres) came from highly collaborative processes that centered research and personal interest in the subjects as well as responding to the sites where they would be staged.
Plays in Place has a very cool model wherein they partner with historical and cultural institutions and build new work that satisfies institutional needs. There's buy-in from the partners, and it leads to a unique form of public history as well as the creation of new site-specific plays.
Question: Can you talk about what it's like to be portraying folks who actually lived, and acting in the places they would have occupied?
Friend: Having the opportunity to perform in locations where the characters would have occupied when they were alive has been such a gift. It has made the process of grounding oneself so much easier. Not only are you wearing a historically accurate costume, holding historically accurate props, and working with dialogue that these wonderful people actually wrote and spoke to each other, but you’re also looking at the walls that your character looked at while doing so. In a way, it’s like a method actor’s dream! Simply by walking into a room, you can be both emotionally and physically immersed in the life of your character.
It’s so empowering, getting to learn about and portray the lives of people who, against all odds, broke barriers and stood tall when the people around them tried to tear them down. It just, in some magnificent way, makes you feel so small and immensely powerful at the same time.
Question: What’s been a favorite moment from the Plays in Place experiences you’ve had — any cool revelations about the history of a place that have come out of the performances, rehearsal, and/or the research?
Friend: I love the letters! All of the amazing, brilliant, and petty letters! We are portraying real people: they smiled, laughed, yelled, cried, and raged when their hearts told them to. Their letters were so colorful and, when deemed necessary, extremely passive aggressive. The letters between Lydia Maria Child and Maria Weston Chapman for example: both authors laced their letters with creative insults, underlined key words to drive the insult home, and wrote out entirely capitalized sentences to express overwhelming frustration or excitement. Who knew “all caps” didn’t start with texting? There’s just nothing like it, it’s so much fun.
Kingston: We performed a reading of my play Circling Suspicion at the Parsons Family Reunion in Northampton to the descendents of the woman who was accused of witchcraft. That was nerve-wracking because I had written a play that depicted their family history — but they seemed to love it!
We hold post-show conversations after every performance where audience members talk to historians from the site and artists from the production. At the conversations after the Pulling at the Roots performances many audience members expressed astonishment that there were enslaved people in Western Massachusetts, and in particular that the famous Reverend Jonathan Edwards was an enslaver. This became such an important conversation that it led to the current exhibit at their museum titled "Slavery and Freedom in Northampton, 1654-1783"
Sloane: I really relish the learning! Most of the stories we've worked on were totally new to me before the plays were written. I learned so much about the Puritans when I was working on Talya's play Circling Suspicion. I had no idea how English they really were, how ruled by litigation and lawsuits. It made me think about early European settlements here in a new way.