SUMMER READING SERIES
Thanks for coming out to hear intriguing readings straight off the page this summer! We like a little sun with our theater and Boise’s beautiful outdoors didn’t disappoint. We hope you enjoy the rest of your summer as we prepare to engage you again this fall with our 23|24 Season. If you loved our Summer Reading Series, try our signature 5X5 Reading Series all season long! Starting September 1, you can get a 5X5 Reading Series Package for just $50 ($30 for students) by adding all the 5X5 performances to your cart, then just watch the pricing automagically adjust at checkout. See you next year!
Previous Readings:
SUMMER READING SERIES
Come out to play! Hear intriguing new works straight off the page, and experience the magic of storytelling without full sets, costumes, or props. Exercise your imagination as you soak up the warm summer sun and enjoy an evening of theater in a casual and laid-back fashion in Boise’s beautiful outdoors, featuring some of Boise’s finest talent and some of the hottest new scripts. Then discuss these remarkable stories with the professionals who breathe life into them.
- August 12 | 7 PM | Bogus Basin | Food available until 6:45 PM | Tickets $15 or $10 for Students with valid ID | Outdoor event; please bring a low-backed chair and/or blanket.
Witch by Jen Silverman
~90 minutes, dramatic comedy
An inventive retelling of a Jacobean drama, Jen Silverman’s sharp, subversive fable debates how much our souls are worth when hope is hard to come by.
A charming devil arrives in the quiet village of Edmonton to bargain for the souls of its residents in exchange for their darkest wishes. Elizabeth should be his easiest target, having been labeled a “witch” and cast out by the town, but her soul is not so readily bought. As the devil returns to convince her – and then returns again – unexpected passions flare, alliances are formed, and the village is forever changed.
REVIEWS:
“There’s a saying that art makes the strange familiar and the familiar strange. That fits Jen Silverman to a T.” -her playwriting professor, Alan MacVey, The University of Iowa
“Jen Silverman’s exceedingly smart new comedy… casts an intoxicating spell. The playwright’s ear for patterns of speech, and the halting language of longing, is marvelous here.” –Chicago Sun Times
“If you’ve seen the bumper sticker ‘well-behaved women don’t make history,’ you’ll have a sense of what Silverman is shrewdly and passionately exploring here: If your unsold soul is so disrespected by your community, then why not give some handsome devil a try? It cannot, arguably, be worse.” –Chicago Tribune
- July 25 | 7 PM | KIN | Doors open at 6 PM | Food & drinks available for purchase from ART HAUS Bar before/after reading. | NO PETS OR OUTSIDE FOOD/DRINK ALLOWED. | Tickets $10 (advance/door)
This is an outdoor event, with the bulk of seating on KIN’s grassy hillside, so bring a blanket or low-backed chair. Musical reading has no intermission. Browse our digital program.
The Last Five Years by Jason Robert Brown
Modern musical ingeniously chronicles the five-year life of a marriage.
Drama Desk award-winner The Last Five Years is Jason Robert Brown’s intimate window into a couple’s doomed marriage. Cathy, a struggling actress, and Jamie, a budding novelist on the brink of wild success, are 20-somethings in New York who meet, fall in love, marry, and divorce over the span of five years. Cathy tells the story from the end of their marriage; Jamie begins when they first meet. As the musical unfolds, Cathy moves backward in time to the beginning of the relationship, as Jamie moves forward from their first date to their last goodbye; they meet only once, in the middle, at their wedding. Since its Off-Broadway premiere, Brown’s funny, poignant, and devastatingly honest two-person production has enraptured audiences around the world with its spellbinding and emotional score and libretto.
REVIEW:
“an engaging chamber musical infused with intimate, emotionally perceptive, nonstop songs in which the woman tells their story backward in time from the breakup and the guy tells his side from the smitten beginning.” – Linda Winer, Newsday
CAST:
Tess Makena
as Cathy Hiatt
Tess is delighted to perform a reading of The Last Five Years with BCT! She has had the pleasure of performing previously with BCT in The Show on the Roof, The Storm in the Barn, Lewiston/Clarkston, and Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Other performances include The Last Five Years and Together Again with The Liberty Theatre Company, A Christmas Carol and A Comedy of Errors with Laughing Stock, Crimes of the Heart, Woody Guthrie’s American Song, and Grey Gardens with Company of Fools, The Golden Girls Christmas Extravaganza with Alley Repertory Theater, Hamlet and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street with Shakespearience / Idaho Shakespeare Festival, and numerous plays and musicals with Boise State University (BA) and The College of Southern Idaho (AA).
She has worked in all areas of theater; direction, stage management, design, and crew for various companies, including The Brooklyn Academy of Music (NY), The Public (NY), The O’Neill Theatre Center (CT), The War Horse National Tour Tech Development (ID), and now in administration as The Liberty Theatre Company’s Production and Operations Manager.
Chris Carwithen
as Jamie Wellerstein
Chris Carwithen (he/him) holds a BA in Theatre Performance from Southern Oregon University and has had the privilege of performing with a number of professional theatres, including the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, 5th Avenue in Seattle, Oregon Cabaret Theatre, Arts West, The Shedd Institute, and Company of Fools.
A resident of Idaho since 2017, Chris is proud to be an integral part of The Liberty Theatre Company in Hailey, working as both an artist and a staff member. Notable roles include Jamie in The Last Five Years, Barfée in Spelling Bee, Snoopy in You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown, Gould in Grey Gardens, Yvan in ART, Vanya in Life Sucks, Karl/Steve in Clybourne Park, and Valentine in Babes in Arms.
Dr. Chad Spears
Musical Accompaniment
Chad Spears, a native of Boise, ID, has performed across the US, with additional appearances in Canada and Mexico. A winner of numerous young artist competitions, he made his orchestral debut at the age of eighteen, playing Edvard Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A Minor with the Treasure Valley Youth Symphony. Since then, he has been featured with the Washington-Idaho Symphony and the Coeur d’Alene Symphony as the soloist for Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3, with the Spokane Symphony for Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major and with the University of Idaho Orchestra performing Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2.
Chad earned his Doctor of Music Degree in Piano Performance at Florida State University under the tutelage of Dr. Read Gainsford.
A highly sought-after collaborative pianist, Chad served as a collaborative pianist for the Summer 2021 and Summer 2022 Narnia Festival International Vocal Arts Program in Narni, Italy, and had the opportunity to work with renowned voice teachers Andrea DelGiudice (New York City), Michele Detwiler (Boise, ID), and Maya Hoover (University of Hawai’i at Mānoa). He also had the privilege of working with NYC-based composer Jake Landau, whose operas Pietà and & Aeterna were premiered at the Narnia Festival. In the Summer of 2015, Chad was invited to perform at the Encuentro Internacional de Flauta y Piccolo at the Escuela Superior de Música y Danza in Monterrey, Mexico, where he played in several recitals with the festival’s students and faculty members. He has also been a guest artist in Toronto, Canada, a number of times, performing with flutist Alheli Pimienta and collaborating with composer Adam Sherkin. Chad’s chamber music repertoire is extensive and covers a range of styles from the Bach flute and keyboard sonatas to César Franck’s Sonata for Violin and Piano and Olivier Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du Temps. He is a proponent of new music, having performed works by the Japanese-American composer Hiroya Miura, Ukrainian composer Oleg Bezborodko and Dutch composer Louis Andriessen, among others.
A passionate teacher, Chad is dedicated to inspiring the next generation of musicians. He has served as a group piano instructor at Florida State University and the University of North Florida and has maintained active piano studios in Moscow, ID, and Tallahassee, FL. Chad currently serves as an adjunct instructor for Boise State University’s Department of Music, teaching ear training and class piano. He also is the accompanist for the Opera Theatre course and serves as a freelance collaborative pianist for the department. Chad is the pianist for the Boise-based group Tree City Chamber Players and collaborates with local area school choirs, TRICA, Alley Repertory Theater, Gemma Arts, Opera Elect, Opera Idaho, and the Boise Philharmonic.
UPCOMING SHOWS & EVENTS
