VIEW THE FULL 2026 SEASON
Chester Theatre Company announces their 37th annual summer season, building off last year’s incredible success under new Co-Artistic Directors Christopher Baker and Michelle Ong Hendrick. The 2025 season garnered 5 Berkshire Theater nominations and 2 wins, and 2 productions were named the 10 Best of the Year in the Berkshire Eagle.
“What does the future hold? Can we change the world? Those are the questions in Chester’s 2026 season,” said Ong Hendrick and Baker. “These four plays are each very different, yet all have humor, courage, a little grit and a lot of discoveries. Futurist Buckminster Fuller, activist Fannie Lou Hamer, a group of scientists facing the unexplainable, and a peevish columnist offering transcendent advice; the season is alive with characters who ask: What is our hope for tomorrow?”
“We’re excited to be joined by both old and new members of the Chester Theatre family, bringing together great performers, masterful plays, the best directors and designers, an accomplished technical team and some of the liveliest, most curious audiences to be found anywhere.”
BUY SUBSCRIPTIONS HERE
BUY SINGLE TICKETS HERE
A HUNDRED WORDS FOR SNOW
By Tatty Hennessy
Directed by Michelle Ong Hendrick
June 23-27, 2026
This production will take place on the CenterStage at the ’62 Center for Theatre and Dance.
After her father’s unexpected death, 15-year-old Rory discovers that he was planning a trip for the two of them to the North Pole. So, she picks up his ashes, her passport, and her mother’s credit card, and sets out to make good on his plans. Layered, complex and as beautiful as snowfall, Hennessy’s play is an epic Arctic adventure about adolescence, grief, love, and being an explorer in a melting world.
Other 2026 Season productions:
BUCKMINSTER FULLER: THE HISTORY (and Mystery) OF THE UNIVERSE
By D.W. Jacobs
From the life, work and writings of R. Buckminster Fuller
Directed by Barbara Karger
June 19-28, 2026
This production will take place in the Chester Town Hall Theatre.
Futurist, environmentalist, architect, inventor and geodesic dome designer Buckminster Fuller takes us on a wild journey from his childhood in Massachusetts, to meeting Albert Einstein, to his extraordinary inventions, explaining how doing more with less can save both humanity and the planet.
FANNIE (THE MUSIC AND LIFE OF FANNIE LOU HAMER)
By Cheryl L. West
Directed by Gilbert McCauley
July 2-12, 2026
This production will take place in the Chester Town Hall Theatre.
Filled with music, humor and spirituality, this is the impassioned story of American civil rights activist and hero, Fannie Lou Hamer, from her beginnings as the daughter of a sharecropper, to co-founding the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, to her historic speech at the 1964 Democratic Convention and beyond.
Premiere
AMCHITKA
A New Play by Mark St. Germain
Directed by Julianne Boyd
July 24-Aug 8. 2026
This production will take place in the Chester Town Hall Theatre.
In a monitoring station at Amchitka, a volcanic island 170 miles off the coast of Alaska used for underground nuclear testing in the 1960s, three scientists find themselves cut off from the outside world as an event seems to be underway. But what? A new philosophical thriller by Mark St. Germain, author of Magdalene and Freud’s Last Session.
East Coast Premiere
DEAR ALIEN
By Liz Duffy-Adams
Directed by Michelle Ong Hendrick
Aug 14-23, 2026
This production will take place in the Chester Town Hall Theatre.
In this cheeky existential comedy, a reclusive advice columnist known as “Dear Alien” attempts to finish a book, respond to their readers, help the lovelorn, enlighten the confused, avoid financial ruin, hide from online trolls, escape desolation and explain the nature of human existence. All under a deadline.
