Playwright Michael Dowling was born and bred in the Berkshires and currently lives locally in Hinsdale. His plays often spring from the people and places of the Berkshires. Tamarack House was initially inspired by an actual boarding house on the Pittsfield/Dalton town line and the housing developments he saw rising around it.
The play is set in a big, old boarding house that sits on a beautiful spot of land in a small New England town. The house’s days are numbered, as giant developments are encroaching. Even though it’s run down and beat up, it still has hidden potential not unlike its five current residents, who need to come up with a plan…and quick.
Chris Innvar is one of the actors to appear.
The cast for this staged reading includes Chris Innvar, Joel Rooks, Todd Weeks, and Gordon Joseph Weiss, along with three additional actors to be announced.
The staged reading workshop is presented by the Berkshire Playwrights Lab, in association with New York’s Atlantic Theater Company. Michael Dowling’s Tamarack House will be directed by Jim Frangione on Wednesday, July 14 at 8pm at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center. Admission is free. For reservations, call 413.528.0100 or visit the Mahaiwe Box Office (14 Castle Street, Great Barrington, Mass.).
Dowling is the author of several short plays, the screenplay Brave New Jersey, the full-length play Harvest, and recently the television pilot Taking Things. Speck’s Last, a short film that he wrote and co-directed, premiered at the Boston International Film Festival and screened to sold-out houses at the 2010 Berkshire International Film Festival and is now travelling the film festival circuit. He has directed plays locally at Berkshire Theatre Festival and Chester Theatre Company including Molly Sweeny this summer. This fall, he will teach acting at NYU through the Atlantic Theater Company Acting School. He is currently a Massachusetts Cultural Council Playwriting Fellow.
Director Jim Frangione is a co-artistic director of Berkshire Playwrights Lab. He founded The Stage Company of Boston, directing and acting in over 25 plays. He recently directed Romance at the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater and Seriously Funny at the American Repertory Theater. He performed on Broadway in David Mamet’s The Old Neighborhood, on Off Broadway, at the Alley Theatre, and on the national tour in Oleanna, and in Romance at the Atlantic Theater Company and Mark Taper Forum.
